My job was to watch Hanford. Here’s what I learned in 30 years | Guest Opinion

Nearly every day for the past 31 years, I have thought about, talked about, read about, or wrote about the Hanford Nuclear Site.

After more than three decades of working on the Hanford cleanup on behalf of the State of Oregon, the last 19 of which I spent heading up the Oregon Department of Energy’s Hanford program, I will retire August 31.

It’s a dramatically different Hanford now than the site I first saw on a cold, snowy day in February 1990.

At that time, we didn’t know for certain that Hanford’s plutonium production mission was over. The first, tentative steps of the cleanup were just beginning, with no hint of the multi-billion dollar, multi- decade endeavor it would become. Westinghouse Hanford was expected to begin construction within 18 months on a plant to “vitrify” or immobilize Hanford’s high-level tank waste, and there was similarly no hint that actual construction would not begin for more than a decade and the plant would still not yet have begun operations.

Hanford is an easy target for critics: its cost overruns and schedule delays are legendary. While there is much to criticize, and the cleanup priorities and decisions don’t always reflect the recommendations I submitted on behalf of the state, it is important to recognize that there has been considerable cleanup progress through the years.

Little of that progress came easy. It took perseverance, an investment of significant amounts of money and brainpower, and more time than anyone could have imagined. The Hanford workforce repeatedly demonstrated the ingenuity and the courage and dedication they bring to their job each day.

Through the years, one comment from former Washington Governor/Attorney General/Ecology Director Chris Gregoire sticks with me. At a U.S. Senate Committee hearing in July 2002 she said, “In 13 years since signing the Tri-Party Agreement, we’ve had (three) presidents and six Secretaries of Energy. Each administration has spent time and money rethinking the Hanford cleanup. Each ultimately came to the same conclusions: there is no quick fix.”

That’s a lesson that seems to need revisiting from time to time. In the 18 years since Gregoire voiced that opinion, we have seen additional new Presidents and new Secretaries of Energy and the heads of DOE’s cleanup program continue that quest to make the cleanup cheaper and faster. And yet with each passing year the cleanup instead is expected to take longer, cost more money, and may result in less cleanup than initially envisioned and more waste being left on site.

After countless false starts and delays, the beginning of tank waste treatment seems to be closer than it’s ever been — maybe only three or so years away. That has been one of Oregon’s main priorities for 30 years.

And yet...the entirety of the tank waste treatment program looks far more daunting today than at any time since the cleanup began in 1989. Some scenarios show treatment continuing well past the year 2100 and all scenarios show cost estimates in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

When you look at some of the most complex cleanup accomplishments at Hanford — the demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant and moving irradiated nuclear fuel and then radioactive sludge away from the Columbia River shoreline to safer storage near the middle of the site — each of these projects struggled at one time or another. There were cost overruns, the spread of radiation, and repeated schedule slips. All were incredibly difficult and technically challenging.

All eventually, were completed despite those challenges.

And, as Chris Gregoire said, there was certainly no quick fix. “Slow but steady” is a formula that has been successful.

The last of my 246 work trips to the Tri-Cities occurred in February for the Hanford Advisory Board meeting, before the COVID-19 outbreak stopped most travel. I will miss that beautiful drive through the Columbia River Gorge and even miss the many meetings — some frustrating for sure, but many that were informative and useful.

I do regret that I will retire before seeing the start of vitrification, or the resumption of waste shipments from Hanford to an underground repository in New Mexico — and also knowing that long-term tank waste treatment is so uncertain.

I know there are dedicated Hanford managers, workers, Tribal representatives, regulators, public interest groups and so many others that will continue the work in the years to come. And Oregon will keep up its steady engagement and oversight to ensure cleanup is protective of the Columbia River and our communities that live alongside it — just as we’ve done for the last three decades.

This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 11:50 AM with the headline "My job was to watch Hanford. Here’s what I learned in 30 years | Guest Opinion."