After reviewing a reply from the Energy Department this month, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is still not satisfied the agency and contractor Bechtel National are doing enough to verify safety of structural steel used in construction of the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
“It’s completely unacceptable that the Department of Energy and the private contractor are still unable to produce the paperwork to show whether the steel used at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is safe,” Wyden said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson Tuesday.
“This is not a simple filing issue,” the lawmaker added. “If the quality of the steel can’t be certified as meeting safety standards, then the facility can’t operate. I will stay at this until the Energy Department is able to produce a full accounting and explanation for how safe this steel is.”
The steel issue is key to safety at the plant being built to convert up to 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste into a glass form for disposal.
During a March 20 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Wyden asked Energy Secretary Rick Perry for additional information about structural steel issues raised in a letter by DOE’s then-WTP Federal Project Director Bill Hamel. He had written that much documentation was either missing or of questionable quality.
A subsequent DOE fact sheet, dated April 12, was provided to Wyden’s office. It says Bechtel has procured over 24,000 pieces of structural steel for the Low-Activity Waste (LAW) and Analytical Laboratory (LAB) sections of the plant.
Initially, Bechtel could “readily trace” more than 90% of the material test reports from vendors for either of the two sections. But on March 26, the company informed the DOE Office of River Protection at Hanford the missing reports had been located, DOE said in the fact sheet.
In addition, Bechtel has concluded most of the safety documentation for steel pieces associated with the Pretreatment and High-Level Waste (HLW) sections of the Waste Treatment Plant can be traced.
