CH2M Hill Hanford Group will spend $30,800 to resolve a new fine issued by the Environmental Protection Agency against the Department of Energy and its contractor for delays in notification of a radioactive tank waste spill last summer.
EPA announced the fine Monday, just four days after DOE fined CH2M Hill $302,500 for nuclear safety violations related to the spill. Including a settlement of an earlier fine imposed by the state of Washington and pay withheld by DOE, the spill has cost CH2M Hill almost $1.2 million.
The Department of Energy has awarded the new Hanford contract covering cleanup of the central area of the nuclear reservation to CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co.
It is a limited liability company formed by CH2M Hill Constructors and includes Areva Federal Services, East Tennessee Materials & Energy Corp. and Fluor Federal Services as major subcontractors.
The contract is worth $4.5 billion over 10 years, which includes a five-year base period and an option to extend it for five more years, according to DOE. It replaces a portion of an expiring contract now held by Fluor Hanford.
"Hanford workers have resumed digging up temporarily buried transuranic waste in central Hanford with improved technology that should take some of the surprises out of the work.
Retrieval of the transuranic waste -- typically debris contaminated with plutonium -- was stopped in February by CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. when it ran into problems. Since then the Department of Energy contractor has been working on improvements to its processes.
In 1970 Congress ordered transuranic waste sent to a national repository. But until the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico opened, Hanford workers have been storing waste suspected of being transuranic, often by temporarily burying it.
Much of the waste that Hanford workers have dug up so far to ship to New Mexico was buried in tidy rows and information about what's underground has been available.
But within the last year CH2M Hill has been progressing to more difficult burial trenches, and that's contributed to problems."
Hanford workers have collected a first batch of samples of radioactive sludge from Hanford's K Basins to help design the system that will be used to get the sludge out of the basins and treat it.
New contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. wants to know as much as possible about the sludge as it prepares to treat it, hoping to avoid the sort of false starts and technical problems that have plagued earlier work with the sludge for the Department of Energy.
CH2M Hill has submitted a plan for treatment of the sludge to DOE, which assembled a team of technical experts to review the proposal. The team's report is now being reviewed by DOE officials in Washington, D.C., who have not released information on the proposed plan.
Hanford may have found an efficient way to treat several hundred drums of low-level radioactive waste contaminated with hazardous chemicals and PCBs.
Perma-Fix Northwest Richland has applied for a modification of its permit that would allow it to treat waste contaminated with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, at its facility that now treats low-level waste mixed with other chemicals.
A public hearing is planned at 6:30 p.m. April 7 at the Washington State Department of Ecology office at 3100 Port of Benton Blvd., Richland.
CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., the new central Hanford contractor, has 110 cubic yards of waste containing PCBs with no previous plan for its disposal. There is no technology available on the Hanford site to treat the waste, said Dee Millikin, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill.
The Department of Energy is fining CH2M Hill Hanford Group $302,500 for safety violations related to last summer's spill of radioactive waste at the Hanford tank farms.
"It was only mere chance that prevented personnel from being directly contaminated by significant quantities of tank waste during the course of the event," said a letter sent Thursday to the DOE contractor from the DOE Office of Health, Safety and Security.
CH2M-WG Idaho (CWI), contractor for the Idaho Cleanup Project, resumed work Wednesday morning on construction of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) facility after suspending work on Tuesday, June 30, as a result of recent minor injuries to workers on the project.
"We met with the IWTU construction workforce this morning to review the safety issues we've experienced and to get them involved in improving safety on the project," said Brent Rankin, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for CWI. "We know from experience that the workers on the front line can help identify issues or opportunities for improvement."
The IWTU is being constructed to treat 900,000 gallons of liquid, sodium-bearing waste currently stored in three underground storage tanks at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center. Steam-reforming technology will be used to convert the liquid waste into a more stable granular solid for eventual disposal at a national geologic repository.
Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation have removed a 1.2 million gallon basin that once held 1,100 tons of spent uranium fuel roads, the U.S. Department of Energy says, and are beginning to clean up contaminated soil underneath the basin.
Contractor CH2M Hill's Plateau Remediation Company started excavating the contaminated soil on Sunday, meeting a deadline under DOE's agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Washington.
Earlier this month, workers finished years of work removing the K East Basin that once stored highly radioactive materials underwater, one of the greatest hazards at the former plutonium production site.
The basin held spent nuclear fuel from Hanford's nine reactors beneath 20 feet of water for shielding. Soil underneath the concrete basin was contaminated by leaks in the 1970s and 1990s, DOE says.
Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation have removed a 1.2 million gallon basin that once held 1,100 tons of spent uranium fuel roads, the U.S. Department of Energy says, and are beginning to clean up contaminated soil underneath the basin.
Contractor CH2M Hill's Plateau Remediation Company started excavating the contaminated soil on Sunday, meeting a deadline under DOE's agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Washington.
Earlier this month, workers finished years of work removing the K East Basin that once stored highly radioactive materials underwater, one of the greatest hazards at the former plutonium production site.
The basin held spent nuclear fuel from Hanford's nine reactors beneath 20 feet of water for shielding. Soil underneath the concrete basin was contaminated by leaks in the 1970s and 1990s, DOE says.
DOE announced today that Savannah River Remediation, a limited-liability group headed by URS, won a liquid-waste contract valued at about $3.3 billion. The contract takes effect April 1, 2009 and has a base of six years, with a potential for two more years.
The team consists of URS Washington Division; Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services; Bechtel National; CH2M Hill; and AREVA Federal Services. Designated subcontractors include EnergySolutions Federal EPC and Washington Safety Management Solutions.
The transition to the new contractor for Hanford's tank farms starts today.
However, the transition to a new contractor for cleanup of central Hanford has yet to begin. The Department of Energy had announced that today was the soonest the transition might start, but has not issued a notice to proceed to the new contractor.
At the tank farms, Washington River Protection Solutions begins work today to take over operations from outgoing DOE contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group. The transition is expected to be completed Oct. 1.
RICHLAND, Wash.- The U.S. Department of Energy and its contractor are being hit again for a radioactive spill in Hanford's S-Farm in July 2007.
DOE and contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group have agreed on a proposed $30,000 settlement with the EPA.
The Department of Energy is taking a look at building a new landfill in central Hanford to hold uncontaminated waste that's now being trucked 110 miles for disposal off-site.
"We're looking for greener ways to go," said Jim Butner, project manager for DOE contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co.
The landfill could save taxpayer money and have environmental benefits, said Kevin Leary, a DOE environmental engineer.
The proposal is in early stages of development and a cost study has yet to be done. But Leary estimates that building a new landfill at Hanford could save $2 million over the life of the project just in the cost of fuel for transporting waste to the Roosevelt Regional Landfill.
That doesn't consider the reduction in the site's carbon footprint by eliminating the carbon dioxide production from 3.3 million miles of driving back and forth to Roosevelt.
"I don't think shipping it to Roosevelt is in the government's best interest," Leary said at a committee meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board.
A helicopter is scheduled to fly low over the center of Hanford today looking for hot spots where animals have spread radioactive contamination in hundreds of places among the sagebrush.
CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. will be conducting an aerial radiological survey of the "BC controlled area," 13.7 square miles that have had little human intrusion.
But it is just south of the BC cribs and trenches that 50 million gallons of liquid waste contaminated with radioactive salts were discharged during the Cold War. Animals attracted to the salts spread the waste across miles of the Hanford desert.
Bidders for nuclear work are gearing up to fight for a multibillion pound contract to manage the clean-up of the Dounreay site on the northern coast of Scotland
On Monday, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority issued a tender seeking a consortium to oversee the restoration operation at the derelict site, which contains three former nuclear reactors. The programme is valued at about £3.6bn.
The Pentland Alliance is regarded as the frontrunner for the job. Members of this consortium, which includes Amec, CH2M Hill and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), have been seconded to senior posts at Dounreay over the past three years.
However, in a surprise move last week, the commercial arm of UKAEA chose engineer Babcock International rather than Amec to be its buyer, which raised questions about the future of the Pentland Alliance. However, it is thought that the consortium will continue.
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate is recruiting more than a dozen project managers to speed up its review of new reactor designs - even though they work for the companies hoping to build them.
The Guardian has learnt that the government has approached companies including the US groups Bechtel and CH2M Hill, as well as the UK's Amec, to fill the senior posts. The companies involved are eager to secure lucrative contracts to help build the UK's first new reactors for decades.
Government and industry sources admitted the secondments posed potential conflict of interest problems.
"Work has stopped to dig up waste contaminated with plutonium at Hanford after two incidents earlier this month.
Problems related to the incidents included hazards not being adequately identified and responsibilities of workers not matching their training or qualifications, said Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff in a weekly report just released.
"Worker and management responses demonstrated a failure to implement lessons learned" from previous problems encountered by other Hanford contractors, the safety board report said.
CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. has been digging up transuranic waste, typically waste contaminated with plutonium, that was temporarily buried after 1970."
"Tom Peterson walked into the Toyota Center in Kennewick on Monday leaning on a walker and breathing supplied oxygen through a tube to his nose.
"You guys don't need this," he told about 600 CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Hanford workers.
A former ironworker rigger at Hanford, he once taught health and safety classes at the HAMMER training center to other Hanford workers.
Now, at 58, he's working to make sure that other workers don't fall victim to the same workplace illness that's robbed him of his breath, chronic beryllium disease."
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