Hanford Office of River Protection Manager Retiring
Kevin Smith, the manager of the Department of Energy Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site in Washington state, plans to retire Sept. 30. He gave the word to Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Aug. 15 when the DOE chief visited Hanford.
“The Department of Energy is grateful for Kevin’s service and wishes him the best in retirement,” DOE said in a statement.
Ben Harp, the Office of River Protection’s deputy manager since last December, will serve as acting manager when Smith leaves. The office is responsible for management of 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste held in underground tanks and the Waste Treatment Plant being built to vitrify the waste for disposal.
Smith has served for almost five years as manager, a position that had been marked by turnovers since Congress established the office in 1998. He was at least the seventh manager to lead the office. Smith told employees in an Aug. 17 message that when he took the job his goal was that employees would no longer measure their tenure by the number of managers they survived, but rather would see his eventual departure “as just a normal transition of a stable, mission-focused organization.”
The decision to leave the position was difficult, he said. But he retires from federal service at a time when the Office of River Protection is “a strong, well-performing organization.” The vitrification plant and tank farms are on “good vectors” and a plan to start treating low-activity radioactive waste as early as 2022 has “tremendous internal and external support,” he said. There is a good chance that the technical issues related to high-level radioactive waste, which stopped construction of the plant’s Pretreatment Facility in 2012, could be resolved by December, or at least by February, according to Smith.
It makes sense to allow a transition of leadership in time for the next manager to build a thorough understanding of the tank farms and vitrification plant before processing operations begin, he said.
Smith joined DOE in 2004 after retiring from the Air Force. In addition to working at Hanford, he has worked at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Kansas City Site Office, and the Y-12 Site Office at Oak Ridge, Tenn. DOE has yet to announce any plans for a search for Smith’s replacement.
Hanford Worker Safety Trial Delayed Again
The bench trial in a lawsuit demanding better protection for Hanford Site workers has been delayed by about six weeks to allow the parties more time to pursue a settlement agreement. The trial now is set for July 25, 2018, in the Richland courthouse of U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington.
This is the fourth postponement plaintiffs and defendants have requested and received since the parties announced at the first of the year they planned to pursue mediation in the case. Interim deadlines for filing reports in the case, including identifying experts, also have been moved out four to six weeks by U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice.
The state of Washington, watchdog group Hanford Challenge, and the pipefitters union Local 598 filed suit in September 2015 against the Department of Energy and its Hanford waste storage tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS). Plaintiffs are asking the court to require increased protection for Hanford workers from chemical vapors associated with waste in underground tanks.
Hanford’s tank farm holds about 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste, the byproduct of decades of plutonium production at the site for U.S. nuclear weapons.
Hanford Advisory Board Meeting Canceled
The Sept. 6-7 meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board has been canceled after Department of Energy officials in Washington, D.C., did not approve membership applications and renewals for more than a third of the board positions. The meeting, to be held in Hood River, Ore., was the fourth and final meeting of the full board set for fiscal 2017.
DOE said in a statement the meeting would be rescheduled as “the department is still in the process of finalizing the membership of the HAB.” Information on the renewal of membership for 18 board representatives and appointment of five new members was submitted at the end of June. The board has 32 member positions, plus 32 alternate positions, representing different interest groups to the cleanup site, including tribes, organized labor, nonunion Hanford workers, environmental groups, business interests, and local governments.
