Letter: Get Hanford cleanup done

We must protect our environment and the Hanford workers’ health by completing cleanup as soon as possible. We can get our needed DOE/EPA funding with a realistic plan to complete cleanup in less than 100 years? The Tri Party Agreement (TPA) was established about 1990, with strict requirement to return the Hanford Site to its original condition!

That TPA has required difficult attempts to develop special equipment, processes, and systems, which take extra cost and time. As more years pass, our workers are getting more unhealthy exposures while handling waste volumes with unknown hazards. Our worker safety problem is getting worse, more waste is generated, and monitoring of groundwater/river could happen to show high contamination levels — what then?

Authors of TPA must organize an “in-the-know” group to revisit the TPA, and apply our 25 years of lessons learned.

Cleanup should retrieve and process all removable volumes of liquid and solid radioactive waste using proven methods and equipment. Remaining structural components and facilities with fixed contamination should be isolated in-place (like caccooned reactors).

Hanford contractors should optimize getting cleanup done, then utilize the expertise at our Hanford Project and PNNL labs to develop new energy sources for DOE!

This story was originally published July 29, 2017 at 7:42 PM with the headline "Letter: Get Hanford cleanup done."