Dismantling of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility starts today

ANNETTE CARY / Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA) 19sep02

The Department of Energy office responsible for environmental cleanup will begin dismantling Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility today.

Responsibility for the reactor has been transferred from the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology to the Office of Environmental Management, which will begin decommissioning immediately, DOE announced Wednesday.

"This is deeply disappointing," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. "I strongly disagree with this decision."

Work to shut down FFTF permanently began this year when the Bush administration concluded DOE had no use for the research reactor. Earlier, the Clinton administration made the same decision.

"Our orders have been to shut down the reactor," said Andrea Powell, a DOE spokeswoman in Richland. "We have been since February. This is another piece of that."

DOE already has stopped some maintenance work, including turning off the fan that cooled the nuclear instrumentation and another that cooled the control-rod mechanism.

Today, piping will be cut to four insulated containers that once held liquid nitrogen or argon used with the reactor's liquid sodium system. Cranes then will be used to remove the containers.

Supporters of restarting the reactor want it declared surplus and its operation turned over to private industry to produce isotopes for new medical uses and other industrial uses. Although DOE has not cooperated with that proposal, supporters are looking to support from other government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services.

But as dismantling proceeds, pulling together a plan to restart the reactor privately becomes more difficult.

"What they appear to be doing is taking a Lincoln Continental in the carport and sawing off the wheels and taking out the windows and turning it into a junker without giving us a chance," said Claude Oliver, chairman of Citizens for Medical Isotopes, or CMI, and the Benton County Commission.

The reactor has not been used in a decade, but it's been maintained in standby condition at a cost of as much as $40 million a year included in the Office of Nuclear Energy budget. Once sodium is drained from its cooling system, starting it again could be dangerous.

"The transfer of FFTF (to the cleanup office) will not be to the detriment of cleanup money," said Todd Young, a spokesman for Hastings.

Under an understanding reached with DOE, extra money will be included in Hanford's cleanup budget for the decommissioning so other site cleanup work is not affected, Young said.

However, supporters of restarting the reactor question whether DOE will continue to add extra money to the Hanford cleanup budget in future years to cover the cost of decommissioning FFTF, or whether that money would have to be siphoned from other cleanup work more vital to protecting the environment.

DOE is expecting a plan from contractor Fluor Hanford at the end of the month to accelerate decommissioning, but CMI members said the acceleration seems to be starting without an approved plan.

"It appears to be politically motivated out of Washington, D.C.," Oliver said.

Wednesday night, supporters were checking to see if the reactor could be switched to the cleanup office without violating the Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact that governs Hanford cleanup. At one point DOE was considering keeping the reactor under the Office of Nuclear Energy until decommissioning was finished, but that language doesn't appear to have been made official.

The work scheduled for today is on three insulated containers that held nitrogen. Nitrogen surrounds the sodium piping as a fire prevention measure. The fourth container held argon. If sodium comes into contact with oxygen, it can ignite.

Other containers that still hold nitrogen and argon are not included in today's work plan.

"All those in the Tri-Cities community who fought this fight have every reason to be proud," Hastings said. "This is a battle we should have won, but we certainly didn't lose for lack of trying."

He still believes FFTF is a one-of-a-kind reactor that could have advanced medical and nuclear science, he said.

Supporters of the reactor fear that if it's shut down, America will lose the opportunity to move forward quickly to develop and manufacture new medicines that show promise to treat cancer more effectively and with fewer side effects than conventional treatments.

Now the United States imports most radioisotopes used in medicine, and many of them are of lower quality than could be produced at FFTF.

Biggest Environmental Cleanup Project Begins at Nuclear Site

AP 19sep02

RICHLAND, Wash., Sept. 18 — After a decade of fits and starts, construction has begun on a $4 billion waste treatment complex at the Hanford nuclear reservation, the biggest environmental cleanup project in the country.

Environmental advocates say the timing is none too soon. At least 67 of Hanford's 177 underground tanks, some of them decrepit and well beyond their intended service lives, have leaked more than one million gallons of radioactive brew into the soil.

The waste has contaminated the aquifer, and the tanks are just seven miles from the Columbia River, which borders Hanford.

"There's a lot at stake," said John Britton, a spokesman for Bechtel National, which was hired to rescue the stranded project last year after the previous contractor's cost estimates doubled to $15.2 billion.

State regulators have squabbled with the Energy Department over the project since the early 1990's, when the department scuttled a plan to turn some waste into grout and bury it in sealed containers.

The new plant will turn radioactive waste from plutonium production into more manageable glass cylinders. The process, called vitrification, mixes radioactive waste with glass-forming materials and melts them at 2,000 degrees to make a molten glass that is poured into canisters for long-term storage.

The most-radioactive glass will go to a national repository, probably Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it will take 10,000 years to decay. The less-radioactive waste will be buried in trenches in the 560-square-mile Hanford reservation.

Exactly how much of the nearly 54 million gallons of radioactive waste will be turned into glass is still being debated within the Energy Department. The Bush administration wants the agency to study cheaper ways to treat low-activity radioactive waste.

For now, the focus is on building the plant. In 2005, the plant should be ready for nonradioactive testing; "hot" testing is scheduled to begin in 2007.

Crews at a test site will use simulated waste to find the best way to remove the radioactive mix of liquid, salt cake and sludge from the tanks.

Plutonium was made at the Hanford site for more than 40 years for the nation's nuclear arsenal, including the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.

FFTF foes assail DOE decisions

ANNETTE CARY / Tri-City Herald 15may01

The Department of Energy is violating the Tri-Party Agreement by not filing a cleanup plan for Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility, says a coalition of groups that opposes restarting the Hanford reactor.

They're also critical of DOE's proposal to have the manager of its Brookhaven, N.Y., office head the review of whether the reactor should be restarted, overturning a January decision by the Clinton administration.

"The only fair review of the decision to shut down the FFTF reactor would be the secretary himself (Spencer Abraham) attending hearings in our region and hearing firsthand why (we oppose) adding more nuclear wastes to Hanford's problems," said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group.

The Washington State Department of Ecology says it is not clear whether DOE is out of compliance with the Tri-Party Agreement, but it may be.

The Clinton administration in its final days ordered the Hanford reactor permanently shut down. That triggered a 90-day deadline for DOE to submit a proposal for dismantling the system, including removing and disposing of liquid sodium in its cooling system and treating waste.

However, in April, Abraham suspended the former administration's decision to permanently close the reactor. DOE notified the Department of Ecology then that it would not be filing a schedule for shutdown of FFTF under the Tri-Party Agreement because the shutdown decision had been suspended.

The agreement is a legal pact among DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency and the state that governs Hanford's cleanup.

DOE has agreed to spend three months looking at possible uses for the reactor and whether DOE can find private or other partnerships to decrease its costs.

Although the Department of Ecology is not sure if DOE is in compliance with the cleanup agreement, it's focusing its energies on bigger worries, such as budget cuts that could slow getting tank wastes cleaned up and vitrified, said Sheryl Hutchinson, department communication director.

"We're concerned the budget cuts are putting this in jeopardy for the umpteenth time," she said.

Gov. Gary Locke has said he would support a restart if a viable research use for the reactor is identified. The Department of Ecology will follow his lead and wait for the Bush administration's decision on the reactor's fate, Hutchinson said.

Michael Holland, DOE's Brookhaven manager, was named last week to lead the review of the decision to shut down the reactor. Holland is expected to visit FFTF this week and meet with workers there.

"There is no credibility in having a reviewer who meets only with one side, never attended the public hearings and cannot criticize the cost claims made by a sister nuclear facility run by his own department," said Tom Carpenter, director of the Government Accountability Project.

The reactor costs $40 million a year to keep in standby condition. Once the sodium is drained from its cooling system, it cannot be restarted.

Opponents want DOE to stop all nuclear production -- and the resulting production of nuclear waste -- at Hanford.

Supporters of the restart say it could be used to make isotopes to treat cancer in new ways, to make isotopes to power deep-space missions and to do research and testing for the next generation of nuclear power plants.

Opponents plan a news conference at noon today at the Federal Building in Richland, at which a letter to Abraham will be read. They include Heart of America Northwest, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Government Accountability Project, Hanford Action, Columbia Riverkeeper and Washington Peace Action.