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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0212.338 1996-1998 ,In~ p Il'6~L L(,e~-I' ' ~ -7'r ,kKS, W CONFRONTING THE NUCLEAR LEGACY-PART II / I 4 Hanford's Nuclear Wasteland t_ by Glenn Zorpette, staff writer ;xr: O vet [he next 7S years, the U.S. far-flung interest, and not just because Environmental Protettion Agency-to c government will undertake of the sums involved. "This is absolute- begin working with one another. Un- ~ c what has been called the ly brand-new-not only to industrial fommatelg adherence m the agreement F c largest civil works projett in world his- society but to humankind," says Roy E. has hindered planning and priority set- ) tory in an expansive desert in southeast Gephart, a program manager in the en- ting, several studies have found. F Washington State. When the project is vironmental and energy sciences divi- "We've been on this cleanup effort ~ over, at a cost of well over $SO billion, Sion of Battelle Pacific Northwest Na- for six years, and we're still not out of there will be no sprawling rocket-launch tional Laboratory in Richland, Wash. the starting block," states a scientist a center or string of advanced electricity- "There will be difficult political, social who has worked at Hanford for two generating plants or other inspiring and technical trade-offs as we approach decades. "No program-For rank clean- ~ monuments to progress. What there cleaning up this site." up, groundwater remediation or any- will be, mostly, is radioactive detrirus, In an effott to determine how well thing else-has lasted more millions of tons of i[, ranging fiomcon- the cleanup is proceeding, SetENnete than about two years. We're ~ taminated soil to entire ?ucleaz reactors. AMatttcAN examined several dozen re- not sustaining along-tetrlt vi- k will all be on a large plateau, buried cent reports and other documents, some Sion, and investment in chat in vast landfills or stashed away in a not yet officially released, and condutt- vision, long enough co make - _ collection of nondescript buildings. And ed scores of interviews with cleanup any progress." there it will stag probably for thou- workers, administrators and scieunsts sands of years to come. at Hanford as well as with key DOE Cold Waz Leftovers r : Such is the future of the Department officials and others in Washington, D.C. r;r^' of Energy's Hanford site, the original The picture that emerges from this re- uge as the Hanford U.S. plutonium-production complex search is not encouraging. In addition Hprojett is, it is just one and the source of the plutonium used in to the contaminared soil and water, piece-about afifth-of a ; the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, dozens of potential disasters vie for ac- DOE program to close down - Japan, during World War II. From chose tenrion, including: a large pact of its vast nucle- early days of military and technological 177 huge underground ranks of ar-weapons enterprise over glory, the 1,450-square-kilometer Han- high-level nuclear waste, some of which the next century, give or take ford sire has slowly devolved into a have leaked or are building up heat or a few decades. Estimates of nightmarish agglomeration of decay- Flammable gases; cleanup costs range from ' ing, contaminated facilities chat each • At least a dozen tons of dangerous $230 billion to more than . consume tens of millions of dollars a plutonium, some of it in the soil or oth- half a trillion dollars-well year just to be kept stable or safe. erwise unsecured; in excess of the $375 billion In 1989 th; DOE began deactivating • Five gigantic and profoundly con- it cost, in current dollars, to and cleaning up Hanford. At last count, taminated buildings where plutonium research and build the tens there were about 14,300 contractor was extracted from irradiated nuclear of thousands of weapons that workers and 550 DOE employees at the fuel; were assembled in the U.S. complex, and an estimated 1,400 differ- • 2,100 tons of irradiated fuel, in and to detonare the 1,000 or ent places where environmental work basins chat in an earthquake could be- so chat were tested. Govem- had begun or was needed. At several come lethal, radioactive dustbins. ment officals expett to spend • hundred of these sites, liquid or solid Not surprisinglg questions have been fully 70 percent of the money „'~i nuclear wastes had been intentionally raised about virtually every aspect of on just five DOE sites, includ- g _ : dumped: since 1944 the DOE and its pre- the Hanford projett. They concern ing Hanford. m ~ -+i decessors are believed to have pumped whether the work is being done proper- The imprecision of the time ~ ;xe ` l.3 billion cubic meters of liquid waste ly and efficiently, how cleanup con- and cost estimates results in W and contaminated effluents into Han- tracts are being written and [he possi- part from the lack of agree- ford's soil. biliry that a mishap could cause aradio- ment on how "clean" the for- Over the past seven years, the DOE logical disasrer. The most significant met weapons sites will need i < has spent S7.S billion cleaning up Han- accomplishment of the past seven years to be on that faroff and prob- s ford. It expects to spend at least Sl bil- may be an arrangement that has en- ably chimerical day when lion at Hanford every year for the next abled parties with conflicting interests- they ate formally declared re- four decades. The cleanup has amacted principally the state, the DOE and the habilitated. "There can't be 88 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 1996 ----~~-qq iar ord's Nuclear Wasteland Comm. l40: ~i1fi. I' The U.S. is spending billions to clean up its nuclear weapons complexes. At one o f the most contaminated sites, no one knows how much the project will cost, how long it will take or how much good it will do ! i i cleanup in the traditional sense, like you lossal mess was created requires a bit of Idaho, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. .V~ dean up a kitchen floor or a hazardous history. Starting wnh the Manhanan The uranium was irradiared and q? chemical site in the civil sectoy" notes Project, the U.S. assembled an enor- chemically treated to create plutonium ' sd James D. Werner, director of strategic mous industry for manufacturing nu- at sites near Hanford, Wash., and it planning and anal7sis in the DoE's clear weapons. A great deal of the en- Aiken, S. C.; the plutonium metal was Office of Environmental Management. terprise was devoted to making plutoni- machined into bomb components ar ~ ' " "The stuff we're dealing with can't go um, a basic element of nuclear weapons Rockv Flats, Colo. Those parts came away until it decays. You can container- and the cold war's coin of the realm. together wich hundreds of others into ~ ize it, solidify it, immobilize it and move The metal is derived from uranium, finished weapons at a plant called Pan- I it, but you can't make it go away." which was processed or fashioned into tex in the Texas Panhandle. ~ Understanding how and why this co- nuclear fuel ac complexes in the states of At these sites, the cold war ethos em- i', j Ili 'M1df... H .i~ t 1 *K,i. .ii~~ a. "S > _ s-~; +a~ r <t.~M i y ~ F~ ' ~a. 1- ~9 I -..,r a ~ - .er„~ 7' t' ' Sv i y .:~i.z`~~`,n. III HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE TANK sits about three me- toting and sampling of the wasre. These entry tubes are normally lets underground. Ports and risers admit instruments for moni- sealed by the plate visible in the photograph. Han ford's Nuclear Wasteland SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MaV 1996 g9 "r~ Lt ,w How Hanford Became Contaminated: Some Examples I ¦ NUCLEAR REACTORS w r All but one of Hanford's nine nuclear reactors. ~pa r• which created plutonium in fuel rods, drew water ~ro' ` from the nearby Columbia River, ran it through the hn reactor to cool it antl then dischargetl the water - ..;,f k; _ back into the aver. When fuel cladtlings ruptured. - radioactive elements contaminated the water. ta: which was diverted to [he soil and flowed back to m the river. All the reactors also had nearby bursa; -a[ grounds, where workers dumped solid objects. m - re eluding some extremely radioactive ones. ,T, ¦ REPROCESSING CANYONS ht Five reprocessing canyons were built (three in pl 200 Area West and two in 200 Area Eastl to ex- tract plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. Work le ers poured millions of cubic meters of relativeh lightly radioactive antl chemically contaminates a. wastewater imo the soil. In the 19405 antl early li. 19505. more strongly radioactive wastes from one o - plant were injectetl hundretls of feet below ground. tl ¦ ~ At the same time, large quantities of radioactive iodine were releasetl into the air from two plants ~ ¦ HIGFFLEVEL WASTE TANKS it A total of 177 tanks (91 in 200 Area Eas[ antl 86 - h - - in 200 Area West) store 210.000 cubic meters of -i.;. higNy radioactive nuclear waste. a by-protluc[ of t _ reprocessing. Sixty-seven of the tanks are knows C - w suspected of having leaketl an estimated 3.700 c - cubic meters of [he intensely radioactive waste - into [he soil. I - ¦PL'JiONIUM FINISHING PLANT - t _ - - ' From [his plan[, wastes containing transuranic ei~ , - emen[s, such a5 plutonium and americium, were i r pumped into the grountl. Many intlustrial solvent=_ he 1,450-square-kilometer Han f,~e and other chemical contaminants were also dis nom, ~ ' Tford site encompasses eight dif- e~ charged, including carbon tetrachloride, tributyi %b" ferent sets of numbered areas, where ,~~tt`P phosphate, aluminum fluoritle nitritle. antl lard ail relat°d activities in plutonium pfoduC- ~P (the latter was used as a cutting oil in the machir. ing of plutonum metal). lion were carried out. The three most - _ important were the 100, 200 and 300 R. - ~ ¦ EXPERIMENTAL FACILITIES ~ 4 Areas, where nUClear materials were - A plutonium laboratory, nuclear-fuel fabrication fa E ifradiated, prOCessed and developed. ~ '"r cilities and six small test reactors all occupy what -Richland, Wash., a tiny village before is known as the 300 Area. Waste and uranium World War II, was expanded to house 0 4 8 12 ~ _ bearing liquids were sometimes discharged mto ~O•~ the soil from the laboratories and facilities, as -workers at the Site. KILOMETERS - were contaminated coolants from the reactors. hasized roduction above atl else. continues to re ulace itself where cer- deterioratin conditions ~ p p g g prompted a Scatting wtth the Atomic Energy Com- rain nuclear materials, such as uranitun federal raid in 1989 and a subsequent - mission in the 1940s, the agencies that and plutonium, are concerned.) During lawsuit against the plant's main con- oversaw the weapons complexes were the late 1980s, newspaper investigations trattoy Rockwell International. Ina essenciatly unconcerned with em'iron- began offering the first hints of the ex- plea bargain, Rockwell paid $185 mil- menral degradation. (Nor, it seems, did tent of the contamination inside some lion, and the charges were dropped. Congress pay it much heed.) The DOE of the complexes, intensifying the pees- At about the time of the Rocky Flats and its predecessors answered to no sure on the department to fundamen- episode, the DOE formally faced the in- outside regulators and, it is now known, tally change its activities with regard to evitable by aeacing the Office of Envi- obscured or lied about operations and the environment and safety. ronmental Management (which ex- z conditions inside the complexes. For the DoE, becoming an externally panded on the existing Office of Waste A turnaround began in the mid- regulated entity was difficult and some- Management). This year Environmen- 1980s, when a series of landmark rul- times traumatic. At [he Rocky Flats cal Management will receive $6.026 ings in federal courts established the ap- complex near Denver, where the de- billion of the DOE's [oral budget of - plicability of state and federal environ- parrment's contractors machined Pluto- $16.3 billion ($3.4 billion still goes to- mental laws and regulations co DOE nium, allegations of secret violations of ward weapons work). In comparison, ' ac[iviries. (Notably, however, the DOF, environmental laws and dangerously the entire 1996 budget of the FPA (not 90 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Ma}'1996 f'IQrtfOIdS Nuclear lL'asteGrnd finalized at press time because of the ' surfac tter aze contaminated. Along waste into tl' ~ ail. Fifty-four tanks aze I ~ federal budget impasse) is likely to be I with mctr counterparts in the former ~ continuously - _~nitored, about half be- $5.7 billion. In effect, the DOE is being , Soviet Union, these are the grievously 'cause they occasionally build up flam- painfully transformed into a huge envi- disturbed battlefields of the cold wac ~ mable gases inside-{tearing the possi- ronmentalagency that has so far shown ' I biliry, though slight, of a radiation- ~ Gale apdmde for its core mission. Nightmare in 177 Tanks releasing chemical explosion. The DOE I Only lately, as part of Energy Secre- i spends $80 million a year just to main- tary Hazel R. O'Leazy's initiative to "~'he DOE has been working longest ,Main the tanks and keep them safe. make the DOE more open about is past 1 to stabilize and remediate Hanford, Almost all the tank waste was genet- ~ and present, has the department begun making the site a proving grounds of ated as a by-product of the isolarion of revealing the extent of its ttansgressions. sorts for the many other complexes plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Sin- The DOE and its contractors generated where work is less advanced-includ- gle steel shells covered by reinforced hundreds of thousands of cubic meters trig those in the former Soviet Union. concrete make up 149 of the tanks, ro- of highly radioattive and hazardous This yeaz $1.353 billion of the Enviton- eluding the 67 that have or may have waste and billions of cubic meters of mental Management budget, the largest leaked; the rest have more leak-resis- less radioactive effluents. The DOE now share, will go to Hanford; by the end of rant double shells. Although they were admits that enormous amounts of the [his fiscal year, almost $9 billion will ' ~incended to hold some radioactive prod- liquids and solids were simply pumped have been spent at Hanford on work I acts with half-lives of thousands of or dumped into [he ground. Most of designated as environmental. The lack ~ years, the tanks were designed to last the wastes contain boxh radioattive and of apparent progress, however, has only 25 years-and were built without chemical contaminants. promp[ed many observers to wonder any means for draining the waste. At some places where releases were where exattly the money has gone. The first of the single-shell tanks were intentional, scientists tried to estimate The simplest reason why so little finished in 1944. By 1959, weapons i how much contaminant the soil above progress is apparent is that' unfortu- officials at the DOE's predecessor agen- the groundwater could adsorb; opera- natelg the remediation of contaminated cY knew that some of them had leaked. tors were then supposed to Emit tits- soil and water is one of the least urgent "Yet they kept building them until ~ chazges to 10 percent of that amount. items on Hanford's agenda. Of [he 1964 and kept introducing waste into Judging from the groundwater prob- ,many other, more pressing issues, the them until 1980," notes Andrew P. Ca- letns at most large DOE complexes, the ~ ~ 177 high-level waste tanks are the puto, an attorney with the Nantral Re- technique was rarely or inadequately I biggest, most complex and most costly sources Defense Council, a watchdog applied. In recen[ years, a series of liq- by far. One contractor has estimated group. "It's hard to explain this history ~ aid-effluent treatment plants have be- that this job alone could cos[ $50 bd- in a rational way." I gun operating to clean up the dischazges lion. Nevertheless, until quite recently, The tanks contain waste from three before they go into the ground. the tank farm was tended by some of different reprocessing technologies. In- I a There were accidental releases of Hanford's worst workers. It was "a termittently, other chemical processes waste, too. Almost all are aaributable Siberia for a lot of derelicts on the site," were used to mine the tanks of usefiil or to carelessness: high-level radioactive says Roger F. Bacon, West- wastes sometimes leaked Erom aging inghouse Hanford Compa- I storage tanks into the soil, as did con- ny vice president in charge The DoE is being transformed ~ terminated water from basins contain- of the tank program. trltO a huge envtrOnmental ' trig spent nuclear fuel or other materi- To instill discipline in the ak. Millions of curies of potenrially program, Westinghouse Han- agency that has ShOtflYl little harmful radioactive materials were also ford recently brought in Ba- a tirade Or its core mission. released into the air and nearby river con, a tall, broad-shouldered p f water at Hanford and other sites, some- former navy admiral and times intentionally. submarine commander who Some of the damage is permanent, looks the part. Bacon, who wrote the troublesome isotopes. When some of cleanup technologies either do not exist forward to one of Tom Clarity's books, the tanks started leaking, waste was or could never make a dent in the level now has in the tank-waste project a shiked around from rank to tank-end, of contamination. For example, at Han- mission faz more daunting than any- inevitably, mixed together-to avoid ford, a plume of groundwater contain- thing ever dreamed up for a techno- the leaking vessels. i trig tritium, nitrates and other contatni- thriller. The tanks, many the size of the The bottom line is that DOE officials I, Hants occupies at least 250 square kilo- I U.S. Capitol dome, store 210,000 cubic do not know exattly what is in the meters and is leaching into the Columbia ~ meters of intensely radioactive, high- tanks. That information is necessary Eor Rivet' which runs for 82 kilometer level nucleaz waste. Almost half of Han- several reasons. A legal agreement with through Hanford. It is practically im- ford's known accumulation of roughly the state of Washington obligates the possible to sepazate tritium, a radioac- 450 million curies of radioattivity sit in federal government to mix the waste rive isotope of hydrogen, Erom water. the tanks-a hellish mixture of liquids, with glass (a technique called viaifi- The contaminated plume is only one of gases, peanut-butter-like sludges and canon) for eventual disposal in a high- dozens below the site. ,rocklike "salt cake." level nuclear-waste repository. But the I The DOE estimates that throughout I Sixty-seven of the 177 tanks aze waste catmot be safely or efficiently vtt- I all the weapons complexes, billions of ~ known or suspected of having leaked rifled until the DOE and its contractors i cubic meters of soil, groundwater and ~ an estimated 3,700 cubic meter of know its composition. The waste's in- ; Han~ord's Nuclear Wasteland SetexrtFte M+ttuuN May 1996 91 J R~ `Y+y7 -~.~M= U.S. nuclear weapons pro- - - gram, there have been eight known accidental criticalities and two fatalities, both in 4 New Mexico in the mid- ~j > 1940s. Lately, there have been a few close calls (technically, "criticality infractions"). In - late September 1994 a work- er drained liquid Erom a tank at Rocky Flats, leaving five liters of highly concentrated plutonium solution in what - l the Defense Nuclear Facili- ` ties Safety Board called "a potentially unsafe geometry." There was also a near miss ~ ' ` ~ t' ~ ~ several years ago at the Ida- _ . m ho site, when some fuel bun- ~ tiles suspended in a pool fell ' LL co the bottom near one an- r ~ other. i ~ t~.~ ? During the mid-1980s, 1 W Hanford's plutonium-finish- ~~r ' ~ ~ ing plant was declared a ~ ~ serious eatthquake risk. One ~ PLUTONIUM "BUTTON" waz Hanford's sole product. Consisting mainly of the isotope pluto- anal sis found that a tem- . nium 239, the buttons were sent to be machined into bomb parts in Colorado. The metal must be y ' handled in glove boxes, such az the one shown here, because extremely minute quantities of the blot could rend a construc- metal in the lung can induce cancer. Currently the DOE has no long-term plans for its plutonium. non joint, possibly releasing plutonium compounds into the air. This threat has been ' gredients may be different even in dif- Plutonium sir in storage ac Hanford, pushed into the background by other ' ferent patts of individual tanks. I (much of it under tight security in vaults risks and changing priorities. The "tank-waste characterization" , at the fmishing plant. In addition, an es- Plans for disposing of the scavenged program, which seeks to specify what is cimated LS tons are believed to be in plutonium-not only at Hanford but in the tanks, has been a lightning rod ''waste dispersed in the soil around the also at Rocky Flats, Savannah River for criticism. "They've been doing this site or in pipes and filters in its facilities. and Pantex-have been stymied by the for 10 years and have spent $260 mil- Plutonium exists in many forms at DOE's inability to decide whether pluto- lion, and only now are they at a point Hanford. There are tiny scraps of it, nium should be hoarded for possible where they can take samples at a tea- and it is present in sludges and in 3,500 furore use. `The largest Eactor atfetting sonable rate," says William R. Swick, liters of nitrate and other solutions. At the cleanup scope relative to plutorium senior evaluator for energy and science the finishing plant, workers have begun is the absence of a national polity on issues at the Richland bureau of the cleaning out countless air ducts, filters whether some or all of the plutonium at General Accounting Office (GAOI. Sam- and "glove boxes" where the metal was Hanford is an asset to be maintained in i piing of the tanks is hindered by the extracted and handled. They are also inventory or a waste to be disposed of," high radioactivity and toxicity, which bringing plutonium to the finishing plant wrote analysts Steven M. Blush and make access difficult and dangerous, from other Hanford sites, to consoli- Thomas H. Heitman in a recent con- and by the waste's multiplicity of physi- date the element iu one place. Most of gressional report on Hanford's cleanup. cal states and ongoing chemical activity. it will be baked into oxides or other tea- ~ The DOE spends about $g2 million a sonably stable, powdery forms for long- ~ year maintaining the plutonium just at Deadly Bullion term storage. The work is slow and ex- Hanford's finishing plant. pensive because plutonium is extremely ntil recently, plutonium was Han- dangerous; a mere 27 micrograms in Costly Canyons Uford's raison d'etre, but now it is ~ the lung can bring about cancer. just another big and expensive head Workers must also be mindful of the ''T"he reprocessing plants, where plu- ache. For 40 years, pluronium nitrate metal's critical mass-which can be as j tonium was exrracted from irradi- solutions were brought from the repro- ` little as 11 kilograms. If the critical aced fuel before being sent to the finish- cessing facilities to the on-site plutoni- 1 mass is allowed to accumulate in one ing plant, are another financial burden. um-finishing plant, where the element place, a spontaneous fission chain teat- Hanford has five of them, each in con- , was converted into dull, leadlike "but- i tion known az a criticality can occuy re- Crete buildings called canyons. Some of tons," about the size of hockey pucks, leasing a lethal shower of neutron and the canyons aze comparable in size to ' for farther machining. Eleven tons of (gamma radiation. In the history of the the Empire State Building, if it were ly- 92 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 1996 Han{ord's Nuclear Wasteland ing on its side. Each has internal radix- terms of Hanford's inventory of solid nants that were improperk disposed of I non levels ranging from slight to dead- radioattive waste. Tn 40-year-old, wa- or that are near groundwater or the riv- ly. Their inner surfaces, air filters and ter-filled basins neaz the Columbia Ric- er-for the sole purpose of redisposing ~l duct systems contain large quantiries of ey the DOE and its contractors have of them more carefully and systemati- ' I dangerous radioactive elements. been storing 2,100 tons of spent nude- tally in what is known as the 200.4rea. ' In one of the canyons, known as B- ar fuel, much of it corroded and releas- This area, which includes the reprocess- I I plant, room-size air filters may have ing radioactive elements into the basin ing plants and the high-level waste I` collected as many as 100 million curies water A strong eazthquake, it was real- tanks, ~s on a plateau about 7.i meters I of radioattive cesium and strontium, ized, could release up to 9,000 cubic above the water table. Roughly'0 per- $t7tENTtFIt] AntExtcaN has learned. meters of contaminated water from the cent of Hanford's waste sites are al- Such avast accumulation of radioattiv- basins into the soil and river, allowing read? on the plateau, so the plan basi- ity will make demolition of the build- radiation in the azea above the basins tally involves getting waste from the ing-as required by an agreement be- to soar to lethal levels and dispersing other 30 percent up there. ]n some cos- I ' tween the federal government and the fine radioactive particles into the air. In es, though, "what [hey are doing is I _ state-extremely difficult. A better esti- fact, in the 1970s a large quantin of moving a problem and giving it to mate of the radioactivity is not avail- contaminated water did leak from the someone else a generation latey" one able, because it is so high that `we basins, as did a lesser amount in 1993. Hanford sciemist says. don't have instruments to measure it (No radiation was dispersed into the Besides being the destination for precisely," a Hanford scientist admits. aiy because the leaks were slow, en- thousands of tons of waste and con- The canyons are heavily reinforced ro abling additional water to be pumped taminants from the soil, the 200 Area withstand bombing and have massive in to keep the fuel bundles submerged.) will be the sire of a storage building, a shields in the walls to keep the radix- The DOE spends about $30 million a kind of interim repository, for the 2,100 tion in. Currently maintenance and year maintaining the basins in this un- tons of stabilized spent fuel, as well as ,I surveillance at each of the five repro- settling state. But a $700-million crash another such facilin• for the immobi- ~ cessing plants costs $35 million to $45 program to convert the fuel for stable, lized, high-level waste from the 177 million a year. The DOE and Westing- dry storage in an interim reposirory on giant tanks. Currently an agreement -•Y ~I house Hanford, however, are attempt- high ground is about to ing to decontaminate B-plant and an- begin. When completed, I~ I~ 4~ other canyon, called Purex; they hope around the year 2000, the ~ x+„' ; ~ to put them into a state requiring rela- maintenance costs are ex~ ' Lively little maintenance. (The catch- petted to drop to about phrase at Hanford is "controlled, clean $1 million a year. As with 1 and stable.") The three-year projects Hanford's plutonium and aim to reduce annual expenses to $1 or cesium and s¢ontium $2 million a year. capsules, the ultimate dis- At B-plant, though, about $10 mil- position of the spent fuel t~i I lion a year will still be needed to sustain is uncertain. I - ;~;r (Jthe attached Waste Encapsulation Sror- I 3" age Facility. It houses water-filled pools A New "Cleanup" ° i tj [hat cool and shield some 1,900 cap- j sules, each containing either cesium 137 ~11 told, about $600 or strontium 90. The isoropes were re- million of Hanford's moved from [he high-level waste tanks annual budget goes to- a ears a o to make the waste less ther- ward paying what clean- Y.~ I, Iil. Y g molly and radiologically hot. up officials call the cold The isotopes have half-lives of about war `mortgage"-safely three decades, but the radiation level at maintaining buildings and ' , I the surface of one of the capsules is plants, many old and de- ~ ~ enough to deliver a fatal dose in four raying, and keeping them seconds. The radiation is so intense that from leaking more radix- its interaction •with the water arotmd Lion into the aiy water and xhe canisters causes a bright blue glow, soil. In addition to the like a gaudy effect in ascience-fiction need m spend vast sums , movie. Some analysts have questioned paying the mortgage, there = how long the capsules can be kept as are more complex reasons ~ they are. Brush and Heitman, forexam- why so little actual clean- ple, wrote last yeaz that `Hanford has up has been achieved. ~ no technical basis for assuring that When the DOE's con- "TRANSPORTING PLUTONIUM is not child's play, I WESF [the encapsulation storage fa8li- ttattors at Hanford are appearances m the connary. The handle allows workers I ty] may be relied upon for long-term not trying to keep urgent m be more than a meter from the wagon's comm~ts while pulling it, minimamg exposure to radiation. In safe storage of these capsules." risks Erom becoming di- addition, the wagon's p•lindrical pedestals securely cep- I The cesium and strontium capsules casters, they are generally orate cans containing the material, so that an upset can- are the proverbial tip of the iceberg, in rounding up contami- not trigger a spontaneous nuclear chain reaction. Han/ord's Nuclear Wasteland Sacwnrtc .4ntrxican Slay 199e 93 'A. be? So far specific levels of tasks into a series of more manageable , ' decontamination, consistent milestones leading to a specific out- ; with an intended ultimate come. The contractor's compensation use, have not been set at most depends partly or wholly on when and sites. In fatt, the U.S. govern- how well it meets the milestones. Simi- L ment sell has no standazd s lar v ersions are also bein tm lemente d g P i IpT I" that can be used to determine at other DOE tom lexes besi des Han- _ P when a radiological cleanup ford and also in the contract the DOE _ i~ is complete. The goal of re- has wi[h Bechtel Hanford, another t turning all of Hanford to large contrattor at the site. ~ pristine condition-an utter Thomas P. Grumbly, who was assis- impossibility made plain by Cant secretary in charge of the Environ- themost rudimentary analy- mental Management program unril his sis-has only recently fallen recent promotion to undersecretary of i by the wayside. As spokes- energy, has high hopes for the rech- ~ man Michael V. Berriochoa niques. The idea, he adds, is [o "work of Westinghouse Hanford on the economics first and realize that - puts it, "There isn't enough the economics, over time, will really money in the world." change the system. How much time: [ ~ don't know. Four or five years." ~ Irtr roved Contractin ~ Althou p g. gh most observers say perfor- mance-based contracting is too new co W A (though the peculiaz na- judge, a former DoE official intimately ~ tore of Hanford often familiar with [he Environmental Man- s defies conventional metrics agemenc program is pessimistic. To de- - of cleanup, there is also am- contaminate a building, the former „ ple evidence that utuch of official explains, a contract would have the wod: done so far has to specify that "the building contairs DRUMS OF CONTAMINATED SOLVENT were been grossly inefficient. By the following contaminants in the fol- simply buried in the soil 35 yeazs ago; most of them [he DOE's own esnmates, lowing concentrations. If you don't -re decayed and leaked their contents. Unlike many of cleanup projects started be- know what they are, you would have Hanford's 1,400 waste sires, though, [he contatnina- tween 1989 and 1994 were to issue a separate contract just to do tion in the case shown here was relatively confined. 30 to 50 percent more expen- the assessment, so you can write a 4~.-~ sive than their equivalents in specific enough contratt to do the job with the state legally requires the DOE the private Bettor. right. I have no confidence that the DoE ro bury in the 200 Area eight of the Because virually all work at the can get all the detailed knowledge to nine reactor blocks (the cores of the pro- weapons sites is done by private con- make it work. They would have to rely duction reactors where the uranium cracting companies hired by the DOE, on the convattors themselves to do rods were inserted) and their concrete the ways contracts are written and those assessmenu, in all probability." pedestals, sometime around 2070. struttured can strongly influence the John D. Wagoney the manager of the Each reactor block and its pedestal cost of work. Unfortunately, the DOE's DOE's Richland Operations Office, says comprise an enormous, highly radioac- traditional contracting method, known that the DOE has called in the consult- tive pair of slabs weighing 15,000 tons. as a cost-plus or cost-reimbursal sys- ing firm Arthur Andersen to help write The leading plan for hauling them to [em, penalizes efficiency and [hrift. Un- the next round of performance-based the 200 Area involves the use of a 540- der this scheme, the DOE reimburses a contratts. (Ironically, the contract with million crawling transporter; according contractor for all its expenses in mak- Andersen is no[performance-based.) to the Blush and Heitman repot[, one ing a produtt or performing a service. Whatever its coven[ difficulties, per- DOE official called the idea "lunanc." Additionally, the DOE gives the con- formance-based convacring cannot be The additional costs of moving the re- tractor a percen[age as profi[; the more worse Chan the cost-plus system, many actors-rather [hen entombing them in spent, the greater the profit. The system observers insist. "convacring has been place, as many technical analysts fa- is a holdover from the early weapons at the heart of the problems they've vor-have been put ac $500 million. days, when the risks and costs were had," notes James Noel, assistant direc- When the hundreds of thousands of largely unknown and constantly Chang- for for energy issues of [he GAO. tons of waste have been consolidated, ing. Cleanup persormel may also fear stabilized, packaged and redisposed in that the harder they work, the sooner Legal Hammer the 200 Area, basically all the plateau's they will be unemployed. At Hanford, 130 square kilometers will become a de DOE spokesman Terry L. Brown notes, ~ ontratting, though, is not all that facto repository, in all likelihood for "you hear a dot of [elk: `I'm working ails Hanford by any means. In thousands of years to come. (The shoe- myself out of .job.'" 1989, around the time of the Rocky lived DoE euphemism for such regions In 1994, to try to deal with these Flats crackdown, the DOE, the EPA and was "national sacrifice areas.") problems, the DOE and Westinghouse the state of Washington signed an ex- And once this consolidation has been Hanford switched roperformance-based haustive Tri-Parry Agreement (TPA), accomplished, how clean will Hanford contratts. The approach separate huge which governs almost all aspects of en- 94 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 1996 Nan ford's Nuc(msWasttland n ~ gig, , ~ Y>- " i ,t - ~ vironmental work at the ~ ~ ~ ~ -k"` i site. The TPA, which lists ~ , i specific activities and mile- stones and can fine the DoE I j for missing them, was the ii I template for many other ,ti documents, called compli- _ ~P I ante agreements, governing _ environmental work on a number of DOE sites. Other than the federal deficit, the cost of the work [ha[ the r DoE has committed itself co i in the compliance agree- menu at all of its cleanup I l ' -i sites represents the single greases[ liability of [he U.S. government. By all accounts, the TPA _ - w" was a landmark that en- abled the DOE and Washing- f ton State to begin working together despite deep mis- 4 trust. Because it is a legally enforceable document, the ~ TPA also makes it less likely that the DOE-or Con- gress-will simply give up on the Hanford site in, say, 10 or 20 years. But possibly because of its accomplish- ments, the TPA's flaws are now apparently being over- _ looked. When is was drafted seven years ago, the TPA im- ~ s"f ~ ~ - posed on the DOE a hodge- m '-'x~3 . podge of overlapping and ~~ty, ' ~ sometimes conflicting stale ~a-.,, ~ F' - t~r. and federal environmental § regulations. "The TPA was ~ a puni[ive agreement," ex = -`;~,:n " plains a Hanford veteran ~ . _ LL_ - who wimessed its creation. l REPROCESSING CAM'ON was where irtadiated nuclear fuel was dissolved in nitric acid and Besides the state and fed- chemicalh~ treated in successive "process cells" [o extract its minute quantities of plutonium. The I~''i eral laws, the DOE's conttac- rectangular plates in the floor are the cover blocks for the cells. All the work was done by remo[e- I tors have to continue tom- Iv operated cranes and other machinery to shield workers from lethal levels of radioactivity. plying with existing DOE "orders," which dittate how work must be performed. The 466 or- bons simultaneously, let alone on the puro puts it. So far the state of Wash- ders, says Caputo, the attorney at the type of site we have," notes Gephart of ington and the federal government have Natural Resources Defense Council. the Battelle laboratory. renegotiated the document four rimes are "bvzantine and overlapping. They're What the tangle of regulations and to try to bring i[ more in line with reali- from another era." In addition, the de- external oversight has apparently pre- ry. Eacii renegotiation is "an agonizing pattment and its contractors picked up eluded is a coherent, ra[ional and risk- process, and lots of wade-offs are made," further oversight in the late 1980s in based set of priorities for the complex says Chris Abraham of the GAO's Rich- the form of the Defense Nuclear Facib- as a whole. bfam~ priorities were estab- land bureau. ties Safety Board, an executive-bra?ch lished by the compliance agreements. The absence of a consistent and com- agency that reports to Congress and which set a legally binding timetable plex-wide approach to setting priorities also advises the secrerary of energy. for projects and achievements at the has been cosily. Any problem becomes More recrndg a Hanford advison sites. But the DOE, its contractors and an urgent priority at Hanford-and the i board has consolidated community the state eventually realized that the subject of hundreds of millions of dol- oversight and input "No one has ever schedule set forth i? Hanford's original tars in funding-for largely poli[ical or I, tried to superimpose all these regula- TPA was "wildly unrealistic," as Ca- regulatory reasons. "The history of Han- Han(ord'sNuclearWasteland Sciervnr~cAmErt~cnr+ May 1996 95 a• ~ la x I c+y ~ t,.~Y^A C ~a~' y ~ s" ° ~ spent $4.8 million pumping and treat- Su Q", ~ r s ,.u , , is t ~ , ing water from the spnng to remove les tt,. strontium. Over the next few years, rh x~€~°~, Bechtel expects to build, for $1.5 mil- ca lion, an underground barrier of amaze- ul rial called clinoprilolite, to absorb and pr hold the strontium. th The sole purpose of all this work is to in ~ ~ block from the river an utterly minus- ~ ~ ~ ~ - rule amount of strontium-its yearly ie radioarnvity was last estimated to be a sc " - , * ~ quarter of a curie. To put the radioac- si - z- ~ ~ tiviry in perspective, the Columbia picks • up an estimated 6,000 curies every year ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ from natural sources in Canada and (0 ~ ~ ~ northern Washington. - ;t A Jurisdictional Jumble p The TPA further complicates mat- v ters by placing Hanford under the t; jurisdiction of several environmental e statutes, the two most important being r, the Resource Conservation and Recov- ~ ery Att (RCRA) and the Comprehen- h save Environmental Response, Com- t pensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, s also known as Superfund). Both laws t specify how a contaminated sire must , be cleaned up. RCRA, however, which is usually administered by the state, w pettains mainly to sites where haz- ; ardous waste was, or is being, created, stored or deposited. Superfund, ample- mented by the EPA, covers contaminar R4DIATION Erom capsules of waste cesium and strontium is so intense that its inter- ed sites that are no longer active. Super- action with water creates a glow bright enough to be seen with the naked eve. Radia- Eund, unlike RCRA, can be applied to tion at the surface of the canisters is high enough ro deliver a fatal dose in four seconds; radioactive as well as chemical wastes. the water in the pool shields the room above from the deadly emanations. RCRA and Superfund also require dif- ferent procedures and documentation. ford over the past ]U years has been: There are also simpler examples of Because of the way the TPA applies declare an idea, get started on n. and TPA flaws. In accordance with TPA regulations ro Hanford, any site chat then someone stops you," sacs John provisions, the DOE spends about $23 has beth active and inactive hazardous- Fulton, director of the spent-fuel pro- million a year on experimental treat- waste-producingcomponentsistechni- ject for Westinghouse Hanford. menu of Hanford's groundwater Yet rally covered by both RCRA and Su- Vesriges of various aborted projects several studies have found that current perfund. Such dual coverage has seriously are still visible at Hanford. Thee in- technologies-all variants of a method complicated hundreds of environmental elude the foundanon of a huge faciliro called pump and treat-are inadequate. projects at Hanford alone, the GAO and to viaih• high-level waste ($286 million At best, experts say, pump-and-neat other investigators have found. For ex- was spent on the project before it w•as techniques could only modestly improve ample, deattivation and deconcamina- rerminarediand aplant m mis low-ley- or contain some of Hanford's existing tion of the nuclear reactors on the site el liquid waste with cement, as well as plumes of contamination. "VG'e could are now covered by both RCRA and associated srorage facilities for the re- pump and treat Hanford's groundwater Superfund. >n an attempt to avoid du- sulring blocks of grout ($19 i million for the next centun•, and it would cost placation, some reactors will be handled was spend. Consrantk shaking priori- tens of billions of dollars, and we still primarily under RCRA and the others ties have also thwarted technology de- would nor have clean groundwater" mainly under Superfund, SCIENTIFIC velopment efforts. "Unfortunatelc, [he Gepharr explains. AaIExICnN has found. Thus, exactly the rime cycles For program changes have One project seeks to curtail the seep- same task, being carried out by the been much shorter than the nme cycles age of strontium into a narurallyoccur- same contractor, will be done and doc- Eor technology development," says Billy ring spring near the °N" reactor and umented in two different ways, and the D. Shipp, asscxiate laborarory director the Columbia River. In conformance tons of debris will be disposed of in dif- in the environmental technology diva- with the TPA and the demands of the ferent waste facilities. Sion of the Battelle laboratory. state, DOE contractor Bechtel Hanford The TPA also applies both RCRA and 96 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 199(, Hanjord's Nuclear Wasteland r ?..p 1 A Superfund to the 177 tanks of high- level waste under Yucca Mountain in ing "from current levels [azound $1.4 level waste. The DOE's acquiescence to Nevada. The DOE now says a Yucca billion] to $1.05 billion in fiscal yeaz this dual coverage "foreclosed signifi- repository could not be ready before 1998." Aker that year, funding would cant technological options in the clean- 2015; some experts suspect the opening hold more or less constant for about 40 ~ up of the Hanford tanks and created the will not take place for decades after years. The Battelle report found that "a ' possibility of a potential cost increase in that-if at all. 50 percent reduction in the cost of dean- the range of billions of dollars," accord- Even if the repositories can be put up must be immediately achieved and ~ ing to a January 1996 report by the Na- into use it is unlikely that they could sustained to meet existing commitments ~ tional Research Council. The DOE and contain more than a small fraction of and schedules with the projetted $1.05- its regulators have been attempting to Hanford's waste. Hanford's allocation billion budget." ! ' solve the RCRA/Superfund problem of the hypothetical Yucca repository Given the unlikelihood of trimming I since 1988, with little success. would hold about 6,000 vitrified logs. the price of cleanup so much and, espe- But the high-level waste in Hanford's cially, the legally binding nature of the Troubles Ahead tanks would occupy 20,000 to 60,000 compliance agreements, the U.S. may such logs, according to the Battelle lab- have to reexamine its national priori- S erious as they are, the difficulties the oratory's latest estimates. Hanford's ties. For example, the $6 billion the DOE now faces seem to pale in tom- quantities of transuranic waste have DOE will spend this year to maintain, parison with the ones just ahead. For been estimated to exceed the total ca- stabilize and clean up its weapons tom- example, the TPA requires the DOE to paciry of the New Mexico transuranic plexes is dwarfed by other budgets. The vitrify the high-level waste in the 177 repository-which, like Yucca, would cold war has been over for years, but tanks. A big vittification plane, the fast have to take such waste from dozens of the U.S. will spend about $28 billion ever in the U.S., was built a[ the Savan- other sources besides Hanford. this year on intelligence alone-includ- ~ nah River site in South Carolina; it is Vtrification is one of several crucial ing $8 billion for reconnaissance and $2 billion over budget and six years be- issues whose resolution has been pre- eavesdropping satellites and related pro- I~ hind schedule, according to the Insti- eluded by the precarious relationship gams. At $270 billion, this year's mili- tute for Energy and Environmental Re- between the state of Washington and tary budget roughly equals the antid- search, a Takoma Park, Md., public-in- the DOE. Analysts and, privately, site pared cost of the entire DOE environ- ' retest organization. (Aker innumerable officials ponder such questions as: mental management effort over the next ~ a delays, the plant was finally opened on Should all the tank waste be vitrified? half a century. March 12.) Should the reprocessing buildings be "While I understand the need to cut Aware of the difficulty it would have knocked down? Should the 15,000-ton back on government programs and III in convincing Congress to underwrite reattor blocks and pedestals be hauled make them more efficient, shottchang- another such venture, but obligated by to the 200 Area and buried? Should ing the DOE's cleanup budget will only the TPA to vitrify the waste, the DOE is hundreds of millions of dollars be spent increase the deficit in the long run,° now seeking one or more private tom- pumping and treating groundwater that says Senator John Glenn of Ohio, whose panies to vitrify Hanford's waste. The will never be clean? state has numerots DOE weapons sites. companies would have to build and op- The TPA requires that these ques- "It may look good on paper, but it will i erase the vitrification plant, adhere to bons be answered in the affirmative- only put off the day of reckoning. If we strict safety standards and assume all even though rigorous technical analyses don't get a handle on this mess now, fu- financial risk. The DOE would pay for have argued against such moves. For mre generations will be lek with a bal- the finished glass logs, enabling the example, some studies have suggested loon payment constituting both an en- firms-in theory-to profit. Most ob- converting the gargantuan reprocessing vironmental and budgetary disaster' servers like the idea but are skeptical: buildings co low-level waste reposito- ~ "One of the big problems the DOE has ties. But the TPA currently tules out the had is inability to shik risk to a private possibility. Other problems also await Further Reading company, so that if there is an unantil- solurions, including finding an ultimate pared expense, or a catastrophic event, destination for Hanford's many tons of ON THE HOME FRONT: THE COLD WAx the private company suffers," notes spent nuclear fuel and plutonium. LEGACY of THE HANFORD NUCLEAR SrrE_ What ma final) force the issues is, Michele S. Gerber Universlry of Nebraska Abraham of the GAO. Y Y Press, 1992. Aker the waste is vitrified, the DOE as always, money. "A big vitrification IjpNFORD TANK CLEAN UP: A GUIDE 70 must take away all the glass logs, as plant will be real money," Says West- UNDERSTANDING THE TECHNICAL ISSUES. well as pan of Hanford's transuranic inghouse Hanford president LaMaz Roy E. Gepharc and Regina E. Lundgren. waste, and place them in permanent re- Trego. "So it will have to compete with Technical Reporc PM-10773,1995. Avail- positories in other slates. That is what plutonium disposirion, Medicare, ev- able from Pacific Northwest Laborarory. Washington State desires and the TPA erything-I believe that, in their hears, IMPROVING THE ENVIRONMENT: AN EVAL- stipulates. Standing in the way of this the regulators know there will be a bi UATIOrJ OF THE DOE'S ENVIRONMEMAL g MANAGEMENT PROGRAM. National Re- outcome, though, are vemendous ob- discussion on this in the end," he says. search CouncB, 1995. stales. State opposition has blocked That end, howeve>; is fast approach- TRAIN WRECK ALONG THE RIVER of MoN- the opening of a repository for trans- ing. DOE budges, like those throughout EY: AN EVALUATION OF THE HANFORD uranic waste (contaitung plutotium or the federal governmeen[, are being re- CLEANUP. Steven M. Blush and 'Thomas other elements with atomic numbers doted. An unreleased study by Battelle H. Heitman. Report for the U.S. Seaare greater than 92) in New Mexico and considered cleanup strategies in light of Cotrnnittee on Energy and Natural Re- sources, Ivlarch 1995. the construction of a repository for high- an antilpated decrease in armual ftmd- Han(rnd's Nuclear Wasteland SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 1996 97