This man controls $3.4B of Tri-City area work. Here’s what he says about Hanford

A reorganization of the Department of Energy means one man now has authority over $3.4 billion annually of work in the Tri-City area.

A December reorganization makes the DOE undersecretary for science, Paul Dabbar, responsible for not only Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, but also cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation.

Although Dabbar’s authority over Hanford is new, he’s familiar with the area.

At a confirmation hearing in July, with the duties of the undersecretary for science yet uncertain, he told Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that he had been to the Tri-City area more times than he could remember, visiting Hanford, PNNL and the nuclear power plant near Richland.

He previously was a member of DOE’s Environmental Management Advisory Board, which focuses on Hanford and other DOE cleanup projects.

Since his responsibilities as undersecretary were expanded in December, he’s made another trip to Hanford.

In the first week of the new year he toured many of the nuclear reservation’s high priority projects, including the vitrification plant, the C Tank Farm, the Plutonium Finishing Plant and the PUREX waste storage tunnels.

He also visited the HAMMER training facility and got an update on work to move K Basin sludge to dry storage.

He said he was encouraged by the progress he saw at Hanford.

“After many, many years of work and differences of how to attack the Waste Treatment Plant, it’s very positive” seeing part of the plant so close to being ready to treat some radioactive waste, he said.

The main facility needed at the vitrification plant to start operations should have construction completed by June, heading toward a goal of beginning to treat some low activity radioactive waste in 2022. Construction on the plant started in 2002.

“Finally, we are moving down the road of making glass,” he said during a recent hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

At the Hanford tank farms, which include 177 leak-prone single shell tanks storing radioactive waste, DOE is looking at closing out a tank farm for the first time, Dabbar said.

In late 2017, the last of the 16 tanks in the group called the C Tank Farm were emptied to regulatory standards.

Dabbar earlier saw Hanford when much of the work remained to cleanup Hanford along the Columbia River, including sealing up most of its plutonium-production reactors and decontaminating and tearing down the 300 Area industrial complex used for research and fuel fabrication from World War II through the Cold War just north of Richland.

Now most of that cleanup along the river has been completed. Progress is being made on one of the few projects left along the Columbia River, the storage of highly radioactive sludge in underwater containers at the K West Basin, Dabbar said. Preparations are being made to move the sludge to dry storage away from the river.

“While a great deal of progress has been made by the workers at Hanford, we must remain focused on completing the remaining tasks,” he said.

Prior to his confirmation, Dabbar worked in operations, finance and strategy roles in the energy secretary. He was a managing director at J.P. Morgan, leading energy business areas, including the majority of all nuclear transactions.

But Dabbar, a former nuclear submarine officer, started his operating career as a radiation controls officer.

“That’s certainly a big part of how I still think about things … and Hanford … is at the high end of risk,” he said.

He said in his July confirmation hearing that he had “a very strong feeling around the vapor point,” referring to chemical vapors associated with waste in underground tanks. Workers now are wearing supplied air respirators for most work in the tank farms to protect them from inhaling the vapors.

Much of the focus of his trip earlier this month was on high-risk sites.

They included the Plutonium Finishing Plant, where demolition is stopped because of the spread of radioactive contamination; the PUREX radioactive waste storage tunnels after one was discovered partially collapsed in May; and the highly radioactive spill beneath the 324 Building just north of Richland.

“Overall the department’s focus and my focus in particular ... is to make sure procedures or safety measures going forward are done well,” he said. “We will mitigate risk with the workers and we will make certain that future evolutions at those sites will not commence unless we feel comfortable.”

Dabbar also is expected to visit PNNL, although no date has been announced.

This story was originally published January 22, 2018 at 7:44 PM with the headline "This man controls $3.4B of Tri-City area work. Here’s what he says about Hanford."