YAKIMA, Wash.—The government imposed another fine Monday for a spill of radioactive and hazardous waste last summer at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site.
The Environmental Protection Agency imposed a $6,800 penalty on contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group, which was hired to clean out underground waste tanks at south-central Washington’s Hanford nuclear reservation. Under a settlement agreement, the contractor also will spend $24,000 on new equipment for local emergency responders.
The latest penalties bring the total amount of CH2M Hill penalties and settlement agreements to $683,300 as a result of the spill. The contractor also had $500,000 withheld from its pay by the U.S. Department of Energy, which manages cleanup at the site.
The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Today, cleanup costs are expected to last decades and top $60 billion.
Central to the cleanup is the removal of some 53 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste—enough to cover 123 football fields, including end zones, a food deep—left over from three decades of plutonium production for the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The waste is stewing in 177 underground tanks, some of which have leaked into the aquifer and threaten the neighboring Columbia River.
The spill occurred last July 27, when workers were pumping waste from one of the tanks. A pump blocked, and the workers tried to unblock it by running it in reverse, but between 85 and 114 gallons of waste spilled onto the ground.
The EPA faulted the Energy Department and Englewood, Colo.-based CH2M Hill for failing to promptly notify a national reporting center when the spill occurred.
Prompt notification regarding the release of hazardous materials “can be a matter of life or death,” said Mike Bussell, director of EPA’s Office of Compliance and Enforcement in Seattle.
“We expect the best from the Department of Energy and its contractors at Hanford,” Bussell said in a statement. “When spills occur, immediate notification protects workers, responders and the community. Failure to notify the authorities promptly is not only against the law, it can cost people their lives.”
Washington state regulators also took action against CH2M Hill because of the spill. CH2M Hill was required to pay a $50,000 penalty, plus roughly $300,000 to replace filters on tanks and buy emergency equipment for a local hazardous materials response team.
Last week, the federal Energy Department fined the company $302,500 for the spill. The department already had withheld $500,000 from the company’s pay.
Also last week, the Energy Department announced that Washington River Protection Solutions LLC had won the new contract to retrieve waste and close the tanks. The company will start taking over the job July 1 and officially takes over Oct. 1.
CH2M Hill had held the contract for 11 years.
