A couple of days ago, I blogged about problems at Handford with the handling of two glove boxes by a Department of Energy contractor named Permafix. The boxes were moved from Hanford to Permafix through Richland with parade permits which were not appropriate for such a shipment. When the two glove boxes reached Permafix, there was radiation found on the outside of the plastic wrapped boxes and they were not handled properly when they were moved off the truck.
Coincidentally, the next day I heard a report on the radio that the Environmental Protection Agency was fining the DOE because the DOE and its contractors mishandled radioactive Hanford lab waste by transporting it without proper permits and dumping some of it into a landfill without proper processing. The EPA looked at records between the 1980s and 2011 and concluded that there was a consistent pattern of misbehavior. They levied a fine of $136,000 against the DOE. They admitted that the fine was small considering the severity of the problem but explained that if they raised the fine and/or the DOE contested the fine in court, it would take money away from the amount available to DOE to clean up the mess. I almost drove off the road! This would be like a prosecutor deciding not to fine a bank too much because the bank had to give money back to the people they had cheated and a big fine or expensive lawsuit would reduce the money available to pay back to the victims.
The idea of one department of the U.S. Executive Branch fining another department of the Executive Branch is a little odd. The issue of possible law suits between the EPA and the DOE was also raised. That also is a little odd. That would be like fines and lawsuits between departments of a corporation. It doesn’t really make sense to me. It would seem that if there were problems in the Executive Branch, there would be investigations and then some sort of action might be taken such as firing people and/or changing procedures. Any expenses that resulted from the problems should be taken care of in the budget for the department that is cleaning up the mess.
One of the reasons given for the small fine was that the DOE promised to deal with the problem and the EPA though that that was sufficient. Well, excuse me, but the incident that I blogged about two days ago where there were not proper permits and the contractor mishandled the glove boxes suggests to me that DOE and its contractors didn’t really take their promise to fix things very seriously. A slap on the wrist like the small fine is obviously not sufficient. People need to lose their jobs and the whole mess needs to be publicized. There are serious problems with the way that DOE and its contractors are handling the Hanford cleanup and something needs to be done to impress upon them the need for real change.
