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Part 1 of 2 Parts
       I have often blogged about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south central Washington State. It is one of the most radioactively contaminated sites in the whole world as a result of the use of the site for decades for the development of U.S. nuclear weapons. Government auditors issued a report last Thursday about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
     The new report by the Government Accounting Office found that the companies that were under contract to clean up a decommissioned plutonium plant at Hanford did not conduct the comprehensive safety checks that are required for facilities containing nuclear waste. This failure followed the 2017 collapse of a tunnel leading from a reactor to the plutonium plant which resulted in a lockdown of nearby communities.
     The GAO report found that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) waived a “root cause analysis” of the tunnel collapse because the subsidiary of Jacob Engineering that was supposed to handle inspections requested that the DoE waive the analysis. The DoE did carry out a review to determine weaknesses and risks that are related to contaminated facilities such as the plutonium plant. However, critics charged that that evaluation was “based largely on old data” and “did not include any physical or non-physical inspection” to mark particular facilities that needed to be cleaned up.
      The Hanford Nuclear Reservation was the primary source of enriched plutonium used in nuclear warheads in the U.S. The workforce at Hanford was once over fifty thousand workers. Production of plutonium ended in 1987.  According to the GAO report, parts of Hanford have not been inspected in fifty years. There is concern that there might be additional safety risks that the DoE is not currently aware of. The last inspections that were carried out in some areas of Hanford found that there were structural problems that were bad enough that they “could lead to the potential release of hazardous nuclear materials at five of the 18 facilities at Hanford. The DoE referred reporters to information provided in the new GAO report. Jacobs Engineering was contacted for comments but provided none.
     David Trimble is the director of the GAO natural resources and environmental group said that the DoE needs a better approach to handling safety inspections at Hanford. He also said, “The cleanup of the weapons complex is a huge undertaking with many facilities not expected to be cleaned up for many decades. Given the scope and nature of this contamination, it is critical for DOE to have an effective program to identify and mitigate any risks before they threaten workers, nearby communities or the environment.”
     The DoE has been working with teams of contractors to tackle the enormous task of removing radioactive and toxic waste that has been accumulating at Hanford for decades. The massive scale and the longevity of the weapons production activities at Hanford indicates that cleanup efforts may require most of the next century to accomplish.
Please read Part 2 next.