Owner of Occupational Med Contractor Arrested
WC Monitor
5/2/2014
A co-owner of HPM Corp., which holds the Department of Energy contract to provide occupational medicine services at Hanford, has been arrested on suspicion of assault in the fourth degree, a gross misdemeanor. Grover Cleveland “Cleve” Mooers is accused in documents filed in Franklin County District Court of inappropriate sexual behavior at a holiday party Dec. 15 in the Tri-Cities. His accuser said she pushed him away and turned her back on him when he touched her near the end of the party. He then reached under her dress to touch her through her pantyhose, she alleged in court documents. The woman reported the incident to the Pasco Police Department two days later and a legal complaint was filed against him April 1 by the Franklin County prosecutor. The woman was identified by her initials rather than by name in court documents.
Mooers is listed in corporate filings with Washington state as the vice president, secretary and treasurer of HPM Corp. and HPM Corp. – MSA. On his LinkedIn page he refers to himself as an owner of HPM Corp. Hollie Mooers founded the company in 2001 and is president. Cleve Mooers is scheduled to appear in court May 13. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
DOE Cites CHPRC For Safety Issues, But No Fine
WC Monitor
5/2/2014
After four workers at Hanford’s Plutonium Finishing Plant received radioactive doses from a sealed strontium 90 source in October, the Department of Energy and contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company have identified several noncompliances. While no occupational dose limits were exceeded, “significant worker extremity doses” were documented, according to an April 25 letter from DOE’s Office of Enforcement and Oversight posted this week. “Despite the deficiencies revealed by this event, the Office of Enforcement and Oversight is electing to exercise enforcement discretion at this time based on CHPRC’s completion of a thorough and wide-ranging root cause evaluation that identified direct, root and contributing causes, and the development of comprehensive and conservative corrective actions to prevent recurrence, including improvements to the radiation protection program,” the letter states.
The event originated on Sept.18, when a PFP worker tagged a piece of equipment known as a jig out of service due to a mechanical issue and placed it in locked cabinet. On Oct, 16, a radioactive control technician “found what appeared to be a watch or hearing aid battery on the floor,” and after being handled by three workers “it was placed on the desk for future disposition,” the letter states. The following day a fourth worker noticed “what appeared to be a magnet on the desk and, upon further examination, determined that it was a sealed radioactive source containing a non-accountable (exempt) quantity of Sr-90 with an activity of 966 microcuries,”according to the letter.
In a casual analysis, CHPRC listed several examples of noncompliances. For example, the technical work document did not have detailed direction on how to remove from service malfunctioning jigs. “A worker used masking tape to label the device ‘Do Not Use’ and placed it in a locked cabinet until its formal disposition could be determined,” the letter states. “While this action was a reasonable attempt by the worker to temporarily control the item and mitigate the hazard, it significantly contributed to the unplanned worker exposures that resulted from this event.” Additionally, “source user training for the Hanford Site was not adequate to ensure that users visually recognize the various radioactive sources that are contained within jigs, so users may have had difficulty in properly identifying, categorizing and controlling these hazards.”
The noncompliances identified by CHPRC were under the work processes quality assurance criterion of its nuclear safety management program and the source control provision of its occupational radiation protection program. Additionally, DOE’s Office of Enforcement and Oversight also identified potential noncompliance in three “nuclear safety management program areas (documents and records, quality improvement and training and qualification) and three occupational radiation protection program areas (workplace controls, radiation safety training, and written procedures),” according to the letter.
Contractor: Training and Procedures Improved
CHPRC said in a statement: “We appreciate the Office of Enforcement and Oversight’s review and analysis of this event. CH2M HILL is committed to safe, compliant work across the Hanford Site. The enforcement letter drew from many of our own findings from the investigation we completed after the strontium source was found. As a result of our investigation, we’ve improved our source custodian training and revised applicable procedures.”
DOE Hears Various Concerns at State of Site Meeting
WC Monitor
5/2/2014
Preserving Hanford’s shrub steppe wildland, protecting workers from tank vapors and the shutdown of a major Hanford laboratory dominated comments at Hanford’s State of the Site meeting this week in Richland, Wash. More than 200 people attended the meeting, a larger turnout than at State of the Site meetings held earlier in April in Seattle, Portland and Hood River, Ore. The crowd included workers at the Waste Sampling and Characterization Facility, which the Department of Energy plans to close. The lab receives leaking vials of waste samples and samples without proper chain of custody, said Ann Lambel, a worker at the lab. After the lab shuts down, she expects the samples to be sent to labs in Utah and Georgia and she questioned how DOE could protect the public, particularly without lab workers at Hanford to take quick action in case of a problem.
The Richland Operations Office is facing a possible declining budget, replied Doug Shoop, deputy manager of the DOE office. Just $400 million could be available for cleanup work next year, because of a proposed budget cut of almost $100 million and the hundreds of millions needed to maintain Hanford and keep it in a safe and secure condition, he said. “We are forced to make very, very difficult decisions,” he said Closing the lab could save $10 million a year, he said. The Savannah River and Idaho sites, plus Washington Closure Hanford, already send waste samples off-site for analysis, he said. The Waste Sampling and Characterization Facility analyzes samples of air, water, soil, vapor and sludge with trace amounts of chemicals and radioactive materials. Shutting the 40,000-square-foot lab and some nearby buildings would reduce overhead costs, DOE said when it announced the pending closure in March. But Lambel said representatives of other Hanford contractors have been looking over the lab for possible use for their projects.
Tank Vapor Concerns
Tank vapors were brought up by the crowd at both the Richland and the Seattle meeting. Mike Geffre, who identified himself as a concerned citizen, said he had watched his friends fall ill from chemical vapors that vent from Hanford’s underground waste tanks. Some 28 workers have received medical evaluations after possible exposure to vapors this spring. He challenged Kevin Smith, manager of the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection, to agree that the vapors can cause health problems and even death. It’s true they can cause health issues and, in extreme cases, death, Smith said. The reaction to the vapors depends on an individual’s physiology, he said. “We’re actually on the same side,” he said.
Smith said he is committed to protecting workers from tank vapors. “These workers are on the front line doing really difficult work for all generations to come,” said a woman who identified herself only as Emily at the Seattle meeting. Vapor exposure standards have dropped to lower and lower levels through the years, but workers may have individual sensitivities to chemicals, Smith said. “We do take it seriously,” he said.
Calls for More Land to be Added to National Monument
Rick Lamont of the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society said when the Hanford Reach National Monument was created out of the security zone around Hanford in 2000, it was with the understanding that more land would be added as portions of the production area of Hanford were cleaned up. With much of the cleanup on the Columbia River corridor soon to be completed, DOE needs to keep its word, he said. “Turn it over to the monument so these resources can be preserved,” he said. Laurie Ness, a lifelong Tri-City resident and retired wildlife biologist, said there should be very limited access allowed. Plants, animals and birds on Hanford’s shrub steppe habitat cannot survive with too much disturbance, she said. The habitat will be lost if people cannot recognize it as special or if there’s a land grab by business interests or others for newly cleaned up areas, she said.
DOE is working closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a management plan as the area along the river corridor is cleaned up, Shoop said. There should be some public access, some tribal access and protection of natural resources, he said.
Questions Over Cleanup Delays
In Seattle more questions were asked about delays in Hanford cleanup, including why work is not being done to clean up the 618-11 Burial Ground. Work is being done first on the 618-10 Burial Ground just off the main Hanford highway north of Richland to gain experience, said Dennis Faulk, Hanford program manager for the Environmental Protection Agency. “618-10 is also very nasty, but not as nasty,” he said. The 618-11 Burial Ground is the final one scheduled to be cleaned up in the river corridor, and the work has been complicated because it is just off the parking lot of the Energy Northwest commercial nuclear power reactor, which is on leased Hanford land, said Matt McCormick, manager of the Richland Operations Office. Work is required to be completed in 2018.
DNFSB: Sludge Treatment Design Issues Addressed
WC Monitor
5/2/2014
The Department of Energy has addressed design issues with the Sludge Treatment Project first raised by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in 2012, the DNFSB said last week. The DOE Richland Operations Office approved a Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis and Critical Decision2/3 package in February. “The Board notes that the revised PDSA and final design include appropriate design criteria for safety instrumented systems. The approved documents adequately address the Board’s concern,”states DNFSB’s April 23 letter to DOE’s Richland Operations Office.
The concerns raised by the Board in 2012 “identified among other issues, that the preliminary design did not include design requirements or performance criteria for certain key attributes of safety instrumented systems, such as overall system reliability or independence from non-safety systems, as required by the DOE directives and standards,” the letter states. Procurement of equipment for the project to remove contaminated sludge from at Hanford’s K-Basin near the Columbia River is set to begin later this year. The goal is to transfer sludge out of Hanford’s K-west basin to storage containers on the central plateau, while the basin will subsequently be demolished, reducing the risk of contamination entering the river.
