GAO finds 31 work stoppages at Hanford

Work was stopped 31 times at Hanford's tank farms or vitrification plant over nine years to address safety or construction quality issues, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.

"Depending on what causes a work stoppage and how long it lasts, some stoppages could increase already substantial cleanup costs," the report said.

More work needs to be done to track the costs of the stoppages, the GAO concluded. It advised DOE to establish criteria for when its contractors should track the causes and costs of stoppages, but that the criteria should "fully recognize the importance of worker and nuclear safety."

"Stopping work can be an important first step to dealing with hazardous situations that arise in the course of a cleanup," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., one of the representatives who requested the study, in a statement.

Work stoppages can protect the safety of workers dealing with toxic waste, prevent further environmental contamination and save taxpayers' money, he said.

However, DOE has failed to collect sufficient information to explain stoppages, he said.

"That information would have been instructive in further protecting worker safety and avoid similar stoppages in the future," he said.

DOE has agreed to follow the GAO's recommendations to have its contractors at weapons cleanup sites, including Hanford, better track information related to stoppages.

However, the report said officials are concerned that systematically monitoring all work stoppages could send the message to workers that work stoppages should be avoided, possibly discouraging them from calling a halt to work. Hanford policy allows any employee to call a halt to work to address a safety concern or construction quality issue, in part to give everyone responsibility for safety. Work stoppages also may be initiated by contractors or DOE.

The 31 work stoppages from January 2000 through December 2008 ranged from an hour to more than two years. DOE emphasized in the report that the work stoppages were for portions of projects and that in most cases workers were reassigned to projects where work was continuing.

The short stoppages usually were pauses to refocus workers on safety issues or to address safety concerns. They ranged from a forklift collision with a vehicle to the spread of radiation contamination inside a facility.

Most of the longer work stoppages were in response to construction quality issues at the vitrification plant, a complex, $12.2 billion project. The most publicized was a two-year halt to construction in 2005 to the vitrification plant's High Level Waste Facility and Pretreatment Facility to make sure their designs were adequate to withstand a severe earthquake. In that instance, rather than reassigning workers to continuing construction at other vit plant buildings, 900 workers were laid off.

In other instances, some work was halted when tanks and piping that would hold high-level waste were found to not have adequately tested welds or other quality testing. And in 2005 laboratory tests showed that recently poured concrete didn't meet strength requirements after a supplier changed the way it was producing aggregate for the project.

At the tank farms, which hold 53 million gallons of radioactive waste until it can be treated, some of the work stoppages were to address safety concerns caused by chemical vapors being vented into the air.

In the most publicized stoppage at the tank farms, work to empty older tanks of waste stopped for a year after a spill of waste in July 2007 as one of the tanks was being emptied.

Because contractors are reimbursed for their costs of doing work, DOE has covered the costs of stoppages. However, contractors can be fined or have the portion of the pay they receive as profit reduced.

CH2M Hill Hanford Group, the former tank farm contractor, was fined more than $800,000 over the 2007 spill by DOE and its regulators. In addition it had its pay cut by at least $250,000.

Bechtel National, which is building the vit plant, was fined $748,000 from March 2006 through December 2008 for violations related to meeting construction standards for nuclear facilities and deficiencies in its quality assurance system.

The cost of most of the work stoppages has not been tracked, but DOE did determine that investigations and corrections made after the tank spill cost $8.1 million, not including the costs that lost productivity could add to the total costs of Hanford cleanup.