OR - Hanford contractor admits plutonium gauges were wrong The Associated Press 7/25/01 2:49 AM

RICHLAND, Wash.(AP) -- A Hanford contractor has acknowledged that portable detectors gave erroneous information about plutonium concentrations in waste sent to a Hanford nuclear reservation landfill.

At least one package now at the landfill contains a higher level of plutonium than permitted, based on preliminary analysis, said Doug Sherwood of the Environmental Protection Agency.

He called the Fluor Hanford work "sloppy," and a Fluor Hanford spokeswoman agreed.

In a prepared statement, Fluor Hanford said Tuesday that two portable detectors used between May 1999 and May 2001 were incorrectly calibrated.

Thus errors were made in data provided to Bechtel Hanford about how much plutonium was present in packaged waste removed from the 233-S Plutonium Concentration Facility, currently being dismantled by Bechtel.

A total of 108 items -- such as pipes and valves -- sent to the landfill between February 2000 and April 2001 could have been affected by the inaccurate readings, said Todd Nelson of Bechtel.

The landfill, officially known as the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, can accept waste contaminated only up to a certain level with plutonium or other radioactive materials, Nelson said.

More severely contaminated material must be sent to a waste packaging facility and eventually to a plant in New Mexico.

The huge landfill, located in the center of the southcentral Washington reservation eight miles from the Columbia River and 200 feet above the aquifer, has accepted 3 million tons of low-level waste, U.S. Energy Department officials said. Some has already been covered with earth.

Sherwood said the landfill limit for waste acceptance is 100 nano-curies per gram of transuranic waste, a measure of radioactivity.

He said plutonium is one of the most radioactively toxic substances known to man and, under federal law, any higher concentrations must be buried 300 feet below the Earth's surface in salt at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico.

But he said the EPA is waiting for Fluor's recalculations to figure out the magnitude of the problem.

"We've made no decision on whether they need to exhume the material from the burial ground," Sherwood said. "We don't believe it's a big environmental issue but we do believe it clearly has the potential to violate our waste requirements.

"What we're more concerned about in the long run is making sure we use appropriate methods and have in place effective quality assurance measures to ensure that we don't make this mistake again."

He said the EPA is now checking all data on packages from the 233-S Facility before allowing shipments to the landfill.

"There's enough blame on this particular issue to go all the way around, including me," he said. "This has been a long-term failure and they don't make anyone look very good."

Jean McKenna of Fluor described the problem as human error and said technicians have been working overtime for seven weeks to recalculate the plutonium levels in items from the 233-S facility.

McKenna said the levels can be recalculated from data already in hand, without digging up any waste packages.

"It's human error. It's an honest mistake, but it shows the need for strengthening our procedures," she said.

In the prepared statement, Fluor also said that it has found "measurement and calculation issues and procedure violations" in portable detectors used over the past five years.

"Preliminary indications are that there have been no impacts to human health or the environment from the error," the Fluor statement said. "Fluor continues re-evaluation of data."

Nelson said Bechtel will take action once Fluor finishes its revised estimates.

"Once they lock down their numbers, then we'll go back and reassess all of the shipments we made," he said.

Nelson estimated that one dozen or two dozen employees work at the landfill. He said none of the employees has been sent for health checks.

"We don't believe that any of those shipments represents a hazard to the public or to workers or to the environment," he said.

The Energy Department and its contractors are involved in a long-term waste cleanup at the Hanford reservation, where plutonium was processed for use in the manufacture of nuclear bombs.

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-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001