HANFORD -- The deputy energy secretary emphasized how seriously the Department of Energy takes nuclear safety in meetings with more than 4,000 Hanford employees Monday in his third visit to the nuclear reservation.
Daniel Poneman, the second-highest-ranking official at the Department of Energy, has taken on the issue of nuclear safety at Hanford at the request of Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
It became an issue after a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board investigation concluded in June that failings in the safety culture at the plant could endanger the success of the $12.2 billion plant. Workers may be deterred from reporting technical safety concerns and management from resolving them, it found.
DOE drew a much different conclusion from its own investigation, which concluded that most vitrification plant workers felt free to raise concerns as technical issues are being worked out on the plant's design without fear of retaliation.
"We hold nuclear safety in the utmost importance," Poneman told 1,600 workers at the vit plant Monday. "I don't see a tension between mission and safety. Our job is safety."
Then why has it taken so long for management to see the value of a questioning attitude by workers, asked one worker in the crowd. It appears there has been retaliation, he said.
The questioning attitude and emphasis on safe nuclear operations ought to be nothing new, Poneman said.
Earlier in the day, he met with a group of about 50 workers without management present to hear their views.
Many said they were comfortable raising issues and had raised issues in the past, he said. He also pointed out that the Department of Labor is investigating the claims of former engineering manager Walter Tamosaitis, who believes raising concerns cost him his position at the vit plant. Contractor Bechtel National disagrees.
However, DOE cannot be complacent and has to keep working on ensuring a strong safety culture, Poneman said. DOE has made several changes to strengthen the safety culture and make sure employees feel comfortable raising issues in response to both reports.
Poneman's day also included a meeting in Howard Amon Park in Richland with more than 2,500 Hanford employees, a second meeting with 50 employees to hear their concerns and a community reception by the Tri-City Development Council.
He also met with the Tri-City Herald editorial board, addressing a range of topics.
DOE and the defense board don't always agree, but their discussions among top officials are free of rancor, he said. The defense board provides important reviews of systems, design and management that DOE takes seriously, he said.
But the conflicting conclusions of the DOE and defense board safety investigations led DOE to want to see the defense board data to address "some rather troubling conclusions," he said.
"If you try to solve the problem, you need as much data as possible," he said.
DOE's request for investigation information was in no way meant to target the employees who spoke to the defense board, he said.
The defense board denied DOE's request for its investigation files, calling them confidential.
The vitrification plant is on a technical path that DOE believes will allow it to treat the vast majority of Hanford's 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste now held in underground tanks, Poneman said.
The waste, left from processing irradiated fuel to separate out plutonium, will be turned into a stable glass form at the plant for disposal.
For the portion of the waste that will be more difficult, Hanford has time to further develop additional technologies, he said. The plant is required to begin operating in 2019 and has until 2047 to treat the waste under legal deadlines.
Poneman's visit came on the first business day after Chu announced a reorganization of the DOE Office of Environmental Management, which is responsible for Hanford environmental cleanup.
Moving the office under the direction of the undersecretary for nuclear security, Thomas D'Agostino, makes sense because D'Agostino also is responsible for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Poneman said.
NNSA is responsible for the nation's nuclear weapons and nuclear nonproliferation, making environmental cleanup of nuclear weapons sites like Hanford a logical fit and allowing expertise to be aligned, he said. In addition D'Agostino has put a strong management organization in place, he said.
He praised Ines Triay, the departing assistant secretary for environmental management, saying a family health issue was the only reason she was leaving her post. She will continue to work for DOE.
Each time Poneman visits Hanford and sees the desert landscape and the Yakima, Snake and Columbia rivers, he feels a moral commitment to the environmental cleanup of a site that helped defend the nation during World War II and the Cold War, he said.
Hanford produced much of the nation's plutonium.
Although the administration's proposed 2012 budget for Hanford would increase spending for the Office of River Protection, which oversees tank waste and the vit plant, by 24 percent and cut spending elsewhere by 7 percent, that should not be interpreted as indicating the rest of Hanford cleanup is not as important, he said.
"If we try to do everything equally, we end up not doing it well," he said.
But it makes sense to get a huge and expensive construction project completed, he said. DOE remains committed to cleaning up the rest of Hanford, including central Hanford as cleanup along the river corridor is completed, he said.
Poneman also briefly discussed Battelle's contract to operate DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, which expires in September 2012. DOE has not announced whether Battelle's contract will be renewed or if other companies will be allowed to bid to operate PNNL.
There are circumstances at PNNL that meet some criteria for extending the contract rather than opening it to competition, he said. But it's always healthy to go through the process to look at advantages of each, he said.
-- Annette Cary: 582-1533; acary@tricityherald.com
