SECRETARY CHU CONSIDERING MORE HANDS-ON ROLE IN HANFORD VIT PLANT

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu raised the possibility of becoming directly involved with a look at Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant technology during a visit to Hanford late last week. He is likely to assemble the sort of panel of brilliant and creative thinkers he’s brought together after the Fukushima, Japan, nuclear disaster and the Gulf oil spill, he said. His comments were prompted by a question-and-answer session with about 500 employees in a park along the Columbia River. One employee told Chu he had concerns about the vitrification plant, in part because of the lack of experienced nuclear manufacturing in the United States. People are working hard on the vit plant, but if something does go wrong after it starts operating, they would never forgive themselves, he said. The possibility of a serious problem once the plant begins operating weighs heavily on him, Chu said. That the plant has to operate for 40 years and humans can not go in to fix problems in some areas “is a pretty scary proposition,” he said.

The sort of review team Chu is considering assembling would include people he knows personally rather than experts in specifically related fields, including some of the people he called on after the Gulf oil spill and Fukushima nuclear disaster, he said. They could spend a week looking in detail at the project “to see if anything was overlooked,” possibly with Chu as part of the team, he said. If something were to go wrong at the vit plant, DOE would need to limit the damage to prevent it from escalating and also would need to know how to recover the project, he said. “All these things have to be thought of as we go forward,” he said. Chu traveled to Hanford June 14-15 to meet with small and large groups of Hanford employees to discuss the importance of safety. He committed to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board that he would meet with Hanford workers after the defense board questioned the nuclear safety culture at the Hanford vitrification plant.