TECHNOLOGY USED TO SPOT HANFORD TANK LEAKS ‘SPECIOUS,’ CONTRACTOR EXEC SAYS

In remarks that came just days after the Department of Energy officially announced that at least six of Hanford’s underground waste tanks now appear to be leaking, a former top Hanford tank farms contractor executive yesterday called into question the technology used to detect such leaks. “The technology that we use to decide whether they’re leaking or not is specious at best,” CH2M Hill executive John Fulton said at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix. “Its accuracy [is] plus-or-minus a few percent. When you’re dealing with a 75-foot-diameter tank where a tenth of an inch change means thousands of gallons, I can get about any answer I want.”

Fulton previously led prior tank farms contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group, and now heads up CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., which is responsible for cleaning up Hanford’s Central Plateau region. In separate remarks earlier at this week’s conference, DOE cleanup chief David Huizenga said it is too early to say whether or not additional Hanford tanks may be leaking, with DOE in the midst of conducting a comprehensive evaluation of data taken from a total of 20 tanks. DOE has said that it did not detect the apparent leaks sooner because of errors in how it interpreted data gathered. DOE has also stressed, though, that the apparently leaking tanks do not pose an imminent threat to public health or the environment.