By JOHN STANG
Two union pipefitters have agreed to drop their federal lawsuit against Energy Northwest over radiological contamination suffered during a 2021 refueling outage at the Columbia Generating Station power reactor near Richland, Wash.
U.S. District Judge Mary Dimke in Eastern Washington ordered the case closed Tuesday following a joint motion to dismiss by the parties.
Energy Northwest is a coalition of 28 Washington state utilities that owns the Columbia nuclear plant. The plant is located at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site complex. The accident occurred during the reactor’s maintenance and refueling outage in May 2021.
The two pipe fitters — Shannon “Buck” Phillips and David Holmes— filed the lawsuit, alleging poor planning and procedures caused both to suffer excess plutonium contamination when a containment bag failed. The workers were part of an effort to change out contaminated piping, according to court filings.
The two plaintiffs suffered the most significant contamination of the 22 workers exposed, according to the lawsuit. The case was originally filed in King County Superior Court, and later transferred to federal court.
In November 2023, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) assessed Energy Northwest a white finding and notice of violation over the incident. White “indicates a finding of low to moderate safety or security significance,” according to NRC. White violations are the the second lowest on NRC’s four-step scale.
“The finding involved the failure to take suitable and timely measurements to adequately assess the internal dose of the two pipefitters and compliance with occupational dose equivalent limits associated with the reactor water cleanup contamination event on May 28, 2021,” NRC said in its white finding letter to Energy Northwest.
Energy Northwest set up a written plan for the work, but Phillips and Holmes did not receive it. Intend, they received verbal instructions that did not match the plan, according to the lawsuit. The work was to take place in a glove bag, connected to a vacuum system to contain any radioactive particles. Instead, the pair were told to use a system that had no filter for the particles, and were not provided respirators, the lawsuit said.
