Department of Energy nuclear waste scientist, Dr. Donald Henry Alexander, my former colleague at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, compared the Hanford high level nuclear waste treatment plant to NASA's Challenger before liftoff. Dr. Alexander, who has 30 years of experience in nuclear waste geochemistry and a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan warned that the pipes in the high level waste facility for processing 56 million gallons of very radioactive sludge are built with materials that will corrode, fail and leak within the 40 year design lifetime of the plant. Dr Alexander's Photo, Credit: Anna King via NPR
Don is a can do guy, a company man, who would not put his ass on the line like this if something weren't very wrong. He has been working on nuclear waste geochemistry for 30 years. The DOE has done over 60 years of studies of corrosion resistance of materials used in handling nuclear waste. It's very unlikely he has made a mistake.
"On a scale of 1 to 10, with the hardest metal being a 10, the one that can resist erosion the best being a 10, the metals that were selected for the plant are about a 2," he explains.
The extremely radioactive sludge is highly corrosive and very abrasive. Only the hardest, most corrosion resistant materials will be able to contain the sludge over time. Once waste processing begins, high levels of radioactivity will make repairs virtually impossible in some parts of the plant. The materials need to last for 40 years after which all the radioactive sludge will be vitrified and prepared for final disposal. Dr Alexander thinks they will fail before processing is completed.
Here's why that's a problem: The sludge has a lot of heavy metals, abrasive particles and it's corrosive. It could eat holes in the metal. And Alexander says it could happen in the section of the plant that's sealed off from humans because it will be so radioactively hot.
"From my perspective," he says, "we are probably in a worse position today with respect to our linkage between our design and our safety basis than we've ever been."
These concerns are not Alexander's alone. Experiments run for plant contractor Bechtel showed much more erosion in far less time than predicted by other scientists.
What's more, the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recently issued a report outlining similar concerns with the pipes and vessels.
Alexander felt so strongly about this issue he filed a formal "differing professional opinion" document with the Department of Energy. All of this led the agency to hire a group of other scientists take a look at all the evidence and report back.
Dr Alexander warned the DOE of the materials problems years ago but they continued to install the pipes that could fail. The DOE says that it continues to test the durability of materials and they are committed to safety, but they have not changed materials. Changes become increasingly expensive as the plant nears completion.
Hanford Waste Treatment & Immobilization Plant Project, DOE photo
Alexander says right now Hanford's treatment plant buildings look impressive -– towering giants of concrete and steel. "But when the button is pressed, like it was for the Challenger," he says, "everything changes."
The DOE is expected to release its review team's findings this summer. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board will hold a hearing in the Hanford, Pasco, Kennewick Tri- Cities area this March. The NPR article provides a series of links to the DOE activities.