time once again for community form and we're very lucky to have back with us live in the studios tom carpenter tom carpenter is the executive director of the hanford challenge he worked as the director of the nuclear oversight  government accountability project from one nine hundred eighty five to two thousand and seven you know so founded the cincinnati alliance for responsible energy also known as care which challenge plans to open the defect ridden zimmer nuclear power plant also helped establish and is a board member of the hanford concerns council and its predecessor the hanford joint council and is a former member of the hanford advisory board tom thank you very much for coming and spending time with us again sure thanks for having hanford nuclear site is one of the is the nation's most contaminated nuclear facility resulting from the production of nuclear weapons materials particularly plutonium it's about two hundred miles from seattle in the eastern part of think that it's over right you know that we quit making plutonium there but there's a long you know many decades left to clean up the aftermath of a big nuclear party that happened in south eastern washington and you know that that party left behind this unimaginable amount of nuclear waste most of it stored in the soil a lot of it went into the river into the air what not and so it's taking quite a bit of our time and money as a society to deal with the the nuclear waste issues and the leftovers in the hanford site and it's not going so well thus you have to have some public oversight and that's what the hammer challenge is there to do we tend to work with whistleblowers people who work at the site we educate the public we pay very very close attention to on a daily basis to what's happening at the havard site which is a massive undertaking it's you know it's costing billions of dollars a year and there's eleven thousand people who are employed there so that's that's our mission is to get on top of this cleanup trying to influence it to go into the right direction sometimes with lawsuits sometimes with participation in forums and whatnot but that's that's what hanford challenged us all right well speaking of massive undertaking one of the the main project there now appears to be the waste treatment plant right talk about that sure i know hanford if it had nine reactors to make the plutonium and then five large reprocessing irradiate uranium and other targets so called and you transmute that uranium to make plutonium but that unfortunately makes a lot of other radioactive materials as well but the purpose of hanford was to separate out through chemical process know melting the fuel and acid and whatnot dissolving to get that little speck of plutonium out of this huge mass of nuclear waste basically nuclear fuels but the rest of it had to be disposed of as wast and the vast majority of that went as liquid waste discharges into the soil but the worst of it went into underground nuclear waste tanks and a lot of people here that have lived in seattle in the state of washington  heard of the hanford nuclear waste tanks and these are underground waste tanks there's one hundred seventy seven of these tanks that were largely built in the fifty's and sixty's or forty's and fifty's one hundred in twenty nine one hundred sixty seven single shell tanks made of carbon steel half of those have failed in the fleet a million gallons into the soil or more some people say six million gallons we really don't know and then in the hundred seventy s and eighty's another twenty eight double shell tanks were built again all of these tanks are are under the ground it's you can't inspect the tanks easily because of that but the also  waste when it leaks goes straight into the the soil beneath the tanks and then into the groundwater below the tanks which is anywhere from one hundred twenty to one hundred eighty feet below the surface so this is the big problem at hanford is you know this highly concentrated brew of radioactive materials mixed with chemicals it's hot it's dangerous and extremely tiny tiny little quantities you know molecular level it's lethal and it will be lethal and a problem for the forseeable future right i mean it's for many many generations some of these radionuclides are dangerous for millions of years and some of them are dangerous for the next several hundred  years so that the task at hand for it is largely to remove the waste from these tanks which again have many of failed all of them will fail they weren't designed to last you know for a long time they were temporary holding tanks made of carbon steel most of them have one one wall as opposed to a double walled tank and so when they do fail it just goes into the environment  o none of them were meant to last as long as they have many of them were built to last twenty years and so that that expired right in the one nine hundred sixty s right around the time when we put a man on the moon so here we are fifty years later still using these tanks and the waste treatment plant is supposed to be the plant where you treat the waste in the tanks to remove the waste from the tanks to mix it with molten glass let that glass you know  put that molten glass in a steel tubes in canisters it cools and then the the waste becomes part of the matrix of the glass and then you can store that radioactive glass deep underground and let it decay away so that's the theory unfortunately we haven't been able to accomplish this at hanford this is we're on our fourth or fifth depending on how you count attempts to build a treatment system for this hanford tank waste  we've been trying since one thousand nine hundred ninety s hanford is come up with various schemes that have been canceled the latest scheme started in two thousand and it got pretty far down the road we've you know they they got to a point where seventy five percent of the plant was built you know and ninety nine percent of it designed however they were or using something called fast track where they were designing a little bit and building a little bit and you know that might be ok for you know something like a car assembly plant where you've done it many times but for a nuclear waste facility want to con you've never done it before  it was a bad idea and that was said at the time but that wasn't listened to the worst thing though was apart from that and being then surprised about you know things they didn't know in the design not being able to handle that problem there were also problems with their following the law the rules the nuclear safety laws and whatnot and so now we've got a facility that whose quality is indeterminate meaning we don't know about we can't certify the safety and the reliability of the parts used to build this plant the design is insufficient there they minutes at this point in the start it with whistleblowers pointing this out that if you use this plant as designed then you probably won't be able to sufficiently mix the waste to prevent an explosion because of hydrogen gas build up or nuclear criticality aka a very bad day in the nuclear industry when you have an unplanned nuclear criticality so those safety and technical issues have resulted in you know suspending all work on the  plants and the plant opening date of twenty nineteen is certainly not going to be met at this point the state of washington is very upset about this it's a regulator at the site it's filed litigation in the past to try to get the hanford site which is owned by the federal government to meet its cleanup deadlines and to get this place under control it just five years as ago the  department of energy the federal government and the state of washington in the e p a signed a new agreement committing to a new set of deadlines which was twenty nineteen because the plant was supposed to be opening in two thousand and nine so they they booted it out another ten years  and it wasn't very much longer after that a couple of years later that the deal we admitted we probably won't make the new deadlines either well last last fall be when the state filed its lawsuit that the position of the federal government in court is we don't know when this plant will open so we don't have a schedule we don't have a cost estimate so go away leave us alone we'll tell you when we're ready to commit to a  meanwhile you know they've got a some work arounds that they're planning to put in they want to build a new kind of facility off to the side to do some of the functions of pre treating this waste and hanford is very radiation emitting radionuclides the so they could at least use the low activity way smelter right it wasn't as heavily shielded but there's more of them and maybe get some waste you know at an earlier time and to glass  and that's the name of the game is getting the waste out of the tanks into a glass form and we agree with that we want that to happen that's a good idea as as everyone thinks that's a good idea is accomplishing that is going to be much much harder  about six weeks ago an investigative arm of a government agency the g a o came in and kind of rained on their parade out there and said well this this d flaw plan at this direct feed melter is not immune from the other problems with the safety issues so now congress is kind of sitting back going wow what are we spending all this money on right so there are questions started to be raised about well what's the plan b for the waste treatment plant which is we've been here before and so we're it's we've got a crisis with the tanks we do have to treat the waste we just wonder whether or not the right people are in place to make this happen right can they do it can the department of energy is it the right agency is this the right set of contractors to accomplish this mission because so far we've been met with very expensive failures you know every nuclear facility you have to have a pompadour or steel or concrete that's been inspected and certified and designed to operate and the rigorous environment of a chemical processing plant you know in a nuclear facility it's got to work when there's an earthquake it's got to work when there's a fire and explosion so these pomps for instance was take it's a pomp they have to be examined and designed to withstand that and then you know built of the right quality been inspected and tested so you can't just go to you know home depot and pick up a pop and stick it in your nuclear plant you know has plastic parts in it that will fail etc well you know  hanford you know the contractor out there seems to have done it by phone from home depot but you know they they had equipment put in that was not meeting the codes where you know they they didn't have the quality control required programs in place so that the pedigree isn't there to prove that they've got the right equipment there so the pedigree is less like if you have a purebred dog right then it certifies yes here's the lineage you know you can go check the records etc is the same with a palm you know or a pipe at the plant is you can go you know look at the records and see where the metal from the pipe came from you know who did the work on it whether there was an x ray none of that's there in some cases and that's a real concern because that's a quality indeterminate facility you can't open it the law requires that you have to either tear that out you know or abandon the facility where he can't use it as a nuclear plant and this is happened in the commercial industry over and over again then right you know this was the downfall of some plants in the in the nuclear industry and we know how important it is after three mile island after fukushima after chernow will but you can't risk a nuclear accident the pomps have to work the electrical switches have to work and if they don't you're risking a catastrophe that threatens a large area of land with per minute you know catastrophe where you mentioned having the right people in place is critical to these projects actually working and protecting us all and there have been numerous people out there who were the right people but when they came forward and pointed out the gross errors and problems with this facility they were punished and fired you talk about that yeah you know it's it's kind of amazing because if you look at the this and untouchable guy right i mean this guy's top of his at the top of his game and his job was to research and find out and fix had tickle issues and it came to a point where the plant was not able to you know tackle these problems they were just inherent design issues it's not his it wasn't his job to design it was his job to find the technical issues and the day came when they said ok well we're ready to you know close the design and pivot to construction and commissioning right because well wait a second you've got about fifty huge issues including insufficient mixing of the waste that could result in the production of hydrogen gas which would cause an explosion in nuclear criticality these and other issues like that he had big big issues not not little ones and the next day he was essentially marched out of  fired so that that firing happened about a year and a half ago and another one was donna bushy and donna bush she was the manager of nuclear safety so again she was hired to oversee the safety issues at the site and she worked for the waste treatment plant was employed by a company called you are ass and she when walt got fired you know she was kind of drawn into that right and testified not only in his lawsuit because she was you know deposed but went went beyond that and went to a safety oversight board and testified about the safety issues which they subsequently issued a report on which led to the report the whole plan being suspended so there's no doubt right now that everything that donna said and everything that walt said and another guy named gary bronson he was the chief engineer of the facility the chief scientist became a whistleblower etc all these people paid you know a price with being harassed being isolated being fired the chief scientist you know was transferred away the chief engineer was forced out of his job and then there's a whole kind of bunch of people who were engineers and whatnot who who left either  couldn't take it anymore you know etc so this retaliation is called the safety culture right it's are you do people feel confortable in raising concerns and this is been studied now and surveys have been done by the government by the department of energy itself and by other agencies involved that most people are a good number of people are fearful of raising issues and well it does yeah all these people being fired around you in the low to be very important people whose job it was to report safety issues of course you're going to keep your mouth shut and let you know let someone else raise a concern maybe so they've got a long way to go and that's part of the part of the problem out there is a nuclear facility ought to be welcoming the identification of problems why so you can go fix them right if you have people unwilling or afraid to raise and issue then it doesn't get raised maybe and it doesn't get fixed in the plant opens and you've got a catastrophe or a loss of life or an injury you or the plant just simply breaks and you can't it's very expensive to fix it i mean there's all things that could happen which is why you have in the commercial industry which is far far from perfect but they've got rules that would send people to jail for harassing a quality and specter for instance big fines there's accountability mechanisms the the nuclear regulatory commission which does not have oversight of this facility but does over a commercial plants can actually ban a manager or foreman for life from working in the industry because they might because they harassed a whistleblower right but the department of energy has nothing like that in fact the people who are asked whistleblowers seem to be the ones that get bonuses you know who are there year after year while the people who raise the issues you know are stuck on the outside now having to get lawyers and fight like hell to have a career at all anymore and that's the story of hanford well that's finally come to the attention of congress so senator ron wyden raises as an issue just a few weeks ago the department of energy has you know said well we want to make monaco regel bhutto the new assistant secretary as the boss over over cleanup at that deal he cites the part of energy sites like hanford and senator wyden was on the committee in the senate where that confirmation hearing was happening and he question terry says well you know i sat in this chair and asked you and asked others in the department for a while about how you treat your whistleblowers and he pointed out that the secretary of energy at his behest met with wall to messiah this and donna bushie and other whistleblowers who subsequently got fired and nothing happened right the deal we did nothing about the fact that these people were terminated because i'm sick and tired of it so he blocked her nomination said i'm going to block your nomination until you come back with a plan until you show me that you're about changing the safety culture at the hanford site and start to show me progress on the waste treatment plant i don't think they can i don't think they're capable of it at the department of energy i think they're you know just riddled with  maybe you need different people in the chair you know making the decisions and overseeing the contractors you need a different system and you need a change and it doesn't look like it's going to happen is going to come from the set of actors right now and yeah there are some good people in that system but the leadership is kind of stuck with a very poor a very poor culture in a very poor system so meanwhile it's really the public safety at risk material that can make a three state area uninhabitable you know doesn't take much to release that much cesium or strontium ninety five you know from an explosion or an earthquake or whatever that that causes that release to happen and once the resource the rivers the land the farms the people are contaminated it just is right if you can just go clean it up and we know that from other nuclear facility you know like fukushima internal the essentially permanently uninhabitable around those areas we're risking that at hanford if we're not careful from safety problems like these tanks sitting there without the huge inventory but it's not the only issue it was so those tanks are just a ticking time bomb i mean you're looking at well you know what one washington governor gary locke famously called those tanks underground sure knoebels you know he got a lot of grief for doing that but i thought he hit the nail on the head each tank contains you know millions of curious of radioactivity and people don't know what a curious but it's a million billionth of that is considered would be a fatal dose many cases right so having that much inventory that much radiation in these tanks is is very alarming and disturbing and i think future generations will will look back on this a go what were they thinking why was this not a priority and especially if there is an accident it's you know the public will be very upset that not more was not done to protect the public from this site and they're not just leaking into the ground they're also potential for it as you mentioned already explosions explosions absolutely you know just a few weeks ago i saw a report that you know a test showed that hydrogen gas had built up within one of the sea farm tanks at the hanford site to ninety seven percent of the lower explosive limit that's alarming ninety seven percent is is a very very high figure you're supposed you know every week some tank is reaching that doesn't know it's not routinely monitoring hydrogen gas levels out there and in fact like you know a few months ago they they admitted they didn't check it all you know for for a long long time last year  ixed as i well know this is a crisis you know this is what they you know there's you just wonder about their attitude about safety out there they say safety is our priority and safety is number one but they don't act like it right it's it looks like schedule and looking good those are there you know they want to look like they're doing something and keep the money flowing you know i've called hanford the largest a t m in the desert you know contractors go up there and they're there are withdrawing two billion dollars a year from the federal tax account and it doesn't matter that they're showing progress or not they still get their money every year and there is some progress happening on clean up at hanford i'm not saying that but when it comes to the nuclear waste tanks despite some twenty billion dollars spent on waste treatment not one drop of nuclear waste from the tanks has been treated or taking care of twenty billion dollars and they're poised to sp you know how much more you know tens of billions of dollars more and we're not sure that any of it is going to work just about a minute left can you just give us a really quick update on the exposed workers from the vapor sure you know these these tanks also generate chemicals that emit from the tanks and they it's making workers sick and there is in the last year about seventy two people have gotten severely exposed enough to require medical evaluation a study was done another study was done released last october that said yeah you don't know what you're exposing workers to what levels what health effects are causing and you need to step up your game to protect these people well that resulted in the attorney general the state of washington and hanford challenge by my group and the pipefitters union all filing what's called intent to sue and we're ready to sue them if they don't fix this problem so stay tuned for that because that's coming up just to let you know if people are interested in this kind of thing you have a challenge we're based in seattle we're having an ice cream social in discovery park next friday from five to seven you can come get free ice cream learn about hanford play some games bring your kids get face painting done it cetera so it'll be you know some music there discovery park friday the seventeenth so i hope people can make it and i point out for those who don't know you your organization working with the pipefitters was key in getting those changes at getting the state motivated to jump in and you know we're very pleased with this governor's attitude in the attorney general's attitude about hanford these days you know clearly they're there wanting to see the same kind of changes that the rest of us do this case a triple up work to start i started ministry again when i was in the second grade and i was wearing a bra by the time i was in third grade by the time i was in sixth grade i was a double d and i had to have a cyst removed from my things different after i left this area and started talking to other people that that made our childhood here a lot different we had it was a government owned tannen you had your house painted every year if you needed furniture it was available my father worked out in the area he had numerous health problems he was off work for six months with full pay there were these little metal cans that they used to set out in front of on the front porch when your dad came home from work you knew that that something had happened at work because he had to to fill up the jar and put it in in the little metal outside the house walking home from school you would see these moving trucks and they'd be picking up furniture out of people's houses and bringing them new furniture because their dad said brought home contamination into their house