Lawmaker Calls for Quick Action on New DOE Manager
WC Monitor
6/13/2014
Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) is calling on the Department of Energy to move quickly to name a new Manager for the Richland Operations Office at Hanford, following the retirement of Matt McCormick last week. “I believe the Richland Operations Office needs a Manager who can hold firm to legal commitments made by DOE in the Tri-Party Agreement and ensure they are met; who will work with the local community as decisions are made to ensure collaboration and solid communication; and who will also keep in mind the surrounding public’s desire to access Hanford lands as they are cleaned up. Naming a strong permanent Richland Operations Office Site Manager in short order is one step the Department can take to best position the Hanford site for cleanup success,” Hastings wrote in a June 10 letter to DOE cleanup chief David Huizenga. Hastings added, “While I understand that hiring decisions can take time, I note that uncertainty surrounding leadership and authority can have a negative impact on cleanup success, safety and communications.”
McCormick’s last day at Hanford came on June 5, and since then the Richland Operations Office has been headed on an acting basis by Deputy Manager Doug Shoop. When asked about the Department’s time frame for finding a new permanent manager, a DOE spokesman person said in a written response late this week, “DOE is in the process of seeking a replacement for this important position, and in the meantime Doug Shoop and the Richland Operations Office senior management team will continue to provide leadership and focus on Hanford’s cleanup mission.”
In his letter, Hastings noted that moving quickly to fill the vacancy at the Richland Operations Office will also benefit the other main DOE office at Hanford, the Office of River Protection. “The Richland Operations Office Hanford Site Manager is responsible for an enormous amount of critical cleanup work along the River Corridor and in the Central Plateau—while at the same time providing infrastructure and services to the entire Hanford Site, including the DOE Office of River Protection. This not only provides the greatest opportunity for legally enforceable cleanup commitments under the purview of the Richland Office to be met, but also enables the Office of River Protection to rightly focus its time and attention on tank waste safety, retrieval and treatment,” Hastings wrote.
CHPRC President Fulton to Retire
WC Monitor
6/13/2014
John Fulton, the president of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., plans to retire Sept. 30, he told workers this week. A new leader for the central Hanford and groundwater cleanup contractor should be named by next week, he said. Fulton, a native of the Tri-Cities area, has worked at Hanford off and on since 1979 and has led CH2M Hill at Hanford since 2012. “There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time,” he said in a message to employees. “As we enter year two of our contract’s second five years, our team is poised to successfully complete its mission.”
Under Fulton’s leadership CH2M Hill is treating record amounts of contaminated groundwater at new pump-and-treat facilities added in recent years. In another 15 years most of Hanford groundwater should be restored to drinking-water standards, Fulton said. Substantial progress has been made on the work to prepare Hanford’s Plutonium Finishing Plant for demolition. Just 28 of 238 glove boxes remain and 136 of 196 pencil tanks have been removed. It’s high hazard work and it is complicated work, Fulton said. “All the hazards removal happens before we can start chomping on it with yellow iron,” he said. CH2M Hill also started a program to improve leadership skills and earned the Voluntary Protection Program Star, in the years Fulton has led the contractor.
Long Career at Hanford
Fulton spent time during his 33-year career in nuclear project management at the Idaho Cleanup Project and the Miamisburg Closure Project. But most of his career was spent at Hanford after starting work there as an engineer on the project to make the cesium and strontium capsules now stored at the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility. He later would start the work to get fuel and sludge out of the Hanford K Basins as the Westinghouse Hanford Co. project manager for spent fuel in 1994. That sludge remains in the K West Basin today is a little disappointing, but it is not for lack of trying, he said. Inconsistent funding has delayed work, he said. He was named D-4 director when Washington Closure Hanford took over the river corridor contract. It remains the project he was involved with that had the largest impact, he said. “It changed the landscape at Hanford,” he said. Washington Closure has cleaned out and demolished 284 buildings, some of them highly contaminated.
In 2007 he was named president of then tank farm contractor, CH2M Hill Hanford Group. He also worked as senior vice president for the CH2M Hill Nuclear Business Group, providing direction and leadership for all DOE projects in the United States and other CH2M Hill projects in North America and Asia, before taking over as president of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. He plans to remain in the Tri-Cities after retirement, spending time with family, traveling, hunting and fishing. He also has agreed to work 300-to-400 hours a year for CH2M Hill.
Advisory Board Wants More Info on Lifecycle Costs
WC Monitor
6/13/2014
The Hanford lifecycle cost and schedule report released earlier this year is missing information that could cause cleanup to cost more and take longer than the report indicates, according to the Hanford Advisory Board. The latest annual report, which is a requirement of the Tri-Party Agreement, puts the cost of completing Hanford cleanup, plus some post-cleanup oversight through 2090, at $113.6 billion. But the 2014 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report includes some unrealistic assumptions and does not take into account escalating costs caused by budgets that are lower than those used in the report, the board said in advice sent after its June meeting to the Department of Energy, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency. The report calls for annual budgets in some years as much as $2 billion larger than recent annual budgets, the board said. Projected budgets in the report are based on having enough money to meet legal milestones. “If the budget figures remain at the current level, the completion dates could be extended out an additional 20 to 30 years,” the board said. The board is recommending that DOE include a variety of funding scenarios in the next report to show the negative impacts of insufficient budgets on the long-term schedule and cost of cleanup, the board said.
The board also took issue with the assumption in the report that Hanford’s 28 double-shell tanks will remain fully operational for the 40 years projected for the Waste Treatment Plant to treat waste given that the oldest of the 28 tanks already has a leak from its inner shell. The advisory board has recommended that DOE plan for additional storage capacity, and Washington state wants eight more double-shell tanks built. The report also should reflect plans for storing vitrified high-level radioactive waste at Hanford until a national deep geologic repository is available, the board said. The board recommended that DOE and its regulators consider whether issuing the report annually is necessary when DOE’s master plan for Hanford cleanup has not changed. Significant effort is put into revising the report annually, said board member Jerry Peltie, but the report can change little year to year if DOE has not changed its baseline. The lifecycle plan does not yet reflect DOE proposals to build two new facilities to prepare waste for treatment at the vitrification plant. It also does not reflect changes that will be made after the 2010 consent decree is amended, either through negotiations between DOE and the state or by court intervention.
The board also called for DOE and the state to have an open exchange of information with the board and the public before negotiations on Hanford’s court-enforced consent decree conclude. “The board continues to be very frustrated by constraints placed on DOE and Ecology that have limited open and transparent information sharing with the public,” the board said in advice to DOE and the state Department of Ecology. Major public policy changes could result from changes to the consent decree, and those decisions should not be made behind closed doors, said board member Gerald Pollet. “They are working for us,” said board member Susan Leckband. “I hope they will share a little more information with the people they are working for.”
