The manager of the Department of Energy Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site, Brian Vance, has been selected as acting manager of the Hanford Richland Operations Office.
This is the first time since the Office of River Protection (ORP) was established in 1998 that there has been one top manager for the entire Hanford Site in Eastern Washington state. The Energy Department has not yet announced that it will advertise the Richland Operations Office (RL) manager position, suggesting the joint management plan could become permanent.
Anne White, DOE assistant secretary for environmental management, announced that Vance would step in starting Friday. Current Richland Operations Office Manager Doug Shoop is retiring from federal service today.
In 1998, then-U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) added a requirement to the annual defense authorization bill to split work related to radioactive tank waste into a separate DOE office at Hanford, the Office of River Protection, to ensure DOE would focus on tank waste retrieval and treatment.
The Richland Operations Office manages much of the remaining environmental remediation at the former plutonium production site. In 2018, Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) inserted an amendment in the defense authorization bill for 2019 to keep the two offices separate until at least 2024.
The two offices will continue to have separate congressional appropriations and budgets. But in recent years DOE leadership has moved to connect them, including moving workers for ORP and RL into the same complex of office buildings in Richland, Wash. They also share some common staff, including the chief financial officer for Hanford.
“As Hanford gears up for initiation of low-level tank waste treatment from the Direct Feed Low Activity Waste (DFLAW) approach by 2023, we will require a greater degree of coordination” between the two Hanford offices, White said in a memo to Environmental Management workers on Wednesday. The DFLAW approach calls for the Waste Treatment Plant being built at Hanford to begin treating low-activity radioactive waste initially as technical issues are resolved on parts of the plant that will handle high-level waste.
Vance will serve on a temporary detail to oversee both offices, providing executive level technical expertise, direction, and guidance, White said. The deputy managers of the two offices — Joe Franco at RL and Ben Harp at ORP — will continue day-to-day leadership and administration of their offices, White said.
“This approach provides for the coordination necessary to bring DFLAW on-line while ensuring RL and ORP remain two site offices with distinct scopes and capabilities within their cleanup portfolios,” White said in the memo.
Vance was picked as the ORP manager in October 2018, starting the next month. He previously was the CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. director for the project to remotely excavate the highly radioactive spill under the Hanford 324 Building. He has more than 30 years of leadership experience, serving in key roles with Westinghouse and AREVA, and as a career submarine officer, DOE said when Vance was named ORP manager.
