Annually, the Tri-Party Agreement agencies (Washington State Department of Ecology, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Department of Energy) evaluate the effectiveness of our public involvement activities.
This year, 94 people responded to our survey. We appreciate your input and will look to make changes based on feedback. You can read survey results online or download a PDF.
If you have questions or comments about the survey or anything Hanford-related, please call the Hanford Cleanup Line at 800-321-2008 or email Hanford@ecy.wa.gov.
Late last year, the environmental education journal Clearing put out a call for articles for their annual compendium issue. With the majority of readers in, and content focused on, the Pacific Northwest, I figured it would be a great opportunity to share ways teachers can bring Hanford into their lessons.
The article covers some of the service-learning projects we’ve done with college students, and shorter classroom activities we’ve done with younger students. In addition, it has sections overviewing Hanford history, the cleanup effort, and Hanford-related classroom resources.
To read “Hands-on Hanford: Linking lessons to the world’s largest environmental cleanup” in the Clearing Compendium, skip to page 24 after opening it online.
How long should we wait to close the 149 single-shell tanks (SSTs) at Hanford?
What are the risks to humans and the environment if we wait?
If we wait for more money or better cleanup technologies (we may never get either), what should we do about the current soil contamination?
What will it take to make our decision more certain?
The Draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement (TC & WM EIS) shows that early soil cleanup will help reduce groundwater impacts. About 72 square miles of groundwater under Hanford are contaminated above drinking water standards now. But even if we start today, it will take time to see benefits to groundwater from soil cleanup. But as we wait for action, the conditions worsen.
Part of the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) is to prioritize Hanford cleanup, and the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) schedules that work. One of the TPA milestones is to close all SSTs by 2043. The first of seven waste management areas (WMAs), WMA-C, is scheduled to close by 2019. The schedule requires the remaining six WMAs to be finished in the following 24 years (about one every 4 years). We still have a very long way to go, which makes a good case for finishing WMA-C as soon as we can.
I’m reminded of my high school shop teacher’s motto: You’re not done with your work until you clean up your mess.
All I need to know I learned in shop class
I came onto the tank farms project when USDOE was still performing interim stabilization of SSTs. Interim stabilization meant pumping out all the liquids to stop potential leaks, and that work is mostly done. However, dangerous chemical and radioactive sludge and solids still remain in the tanks.
Hanford tank farm workers use Geiger counters to measure radiation.
As a result of past interim stabilization efforts, hose-in-hose transfer lines were abandoned in many of the tank farms. They were all flushed with fresh water but unusable. They were past their service life, in the way of retrieval work, and had created tripping hazards.
Then, while retrieving waste from a tank, a gasket in a hose-in-hose transfer line failed, which led to an investigation and enforcement actions. After this, the agencies realized that leaving the lines lying around was not good housekeeping, deciding they must all be removed and properly disposed.
At about the same time, the double-shell tank upgrades were moving forward. When contractors opened old valve boxes, again hoses from transfers performed decades ago remained. Upgrades were more difficult because of the mess left behind.
With those experiences in mind, I don’t want to leave an important step in tank closure half done. We need to finish WMA-C.
We have done a lot of important work, including soil studies and closure planning. But work slowdowns and budget cuts continue to worry me. The TC & WM EIS confirms that the contamination is serious and that the groundwater problems we already face will worsen the longer we wait.
So our advice to USDOE includes my shop teacher’s motto:
Don’t wait! Meet the scheduled deadlines for closing WMA-C. You’re not done until you finish cleaning up!
John Price and I ventured down to Oregon State University (OSU) on February 23 to talk about Hanford with students and faculty, as well as other Corvallis residents. We were joined on the visit by Ken Niles from the Oregon Department of Energy, and Max Power, chair of the Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board.
Our first presentation was with students in OSU’s Master’s in Public Policy program. Hanford has many policy issues to consider, such as budget decisions, risk issues, tribal obligations, and natural resource damage assessments. For many of the students, this was their first introduction to Hanford, and they had a lot of good questions.
Ecology's John Price talks about Hanford.
Our second presentation was sponsored by the university’s Student Sustainability Initiative. The evening event drew about 50 people to Gilfillan Auditorium on campus. We had a good mix of Hanford newcomers and others who obviously knew something about the history and the cleanup efforts.
Overall, people appreciated the opportunity to talk about Hanford issues and get the perspectives of both states involved in the cleanup. The groups also enjoyed the animated video, What’s in Hanford’s Backyard, that was shown during both presentations. The video was created by students at Washington State University Tri-Cities through a project created by Ecology. One student also blogged about our visit.
Corvallis hasn’t traditionally been visited frequently by the agencies involved in Hanford cleanup. But there was genuine interest from both students and residents in what’s happening at the Site, and it’s a relationship we believe we can build on.
Working with an English instructor at the Tri-Cities branch of Washington State University (WSU), we tasked his 48 technical communication students with the goal of reaching high school and college students about the Hanford nuclear site cleanup. Usually when students are given more control over the direction of a project, their interest level increases as does the creativity of their solutions. These students didn’t disappoint, single-handedly informing over 600 young Tri-Citians about Hanford.
A Tri-Cities Prep senior wins a WSU frisbee for a correct answer.
Four of the eight groups chose to present Hanford information in history and science classes at four local high schools. In all, they presented to 14 classes, playing Jeopardy-style games and giving away informative handouts, vitrified marbles simulating glassified waste from Hanford tanks, and WSU and Ecology promotional items.
Another group took a risk by holding a public presentation about the various roles of Hanford contractors and the types of people they employ. Knowing the success of their project depended upon attendance at their event, they offered free pizza afterward and extra credit for Hanford High students who stayed throughout. Their sign-in sheet, which was only available to attendees as they exited, had 51 names on it.
Noor Ullah presents HanfordLearning.com to his classmates.
The remaining three groups sought to reach young minds through the Internet. HanfordLearning.org includes historical and cleanup information with quizzes to test users’ comprehension, video interviews with Tri-Party Agency representatives, and resources for teachers and others interested in learning more about Hanford. This group’s phenomenal work also creates an opportunity for other students to maintain and grow this website.
The B Reactor Hanford Facebook group scored when the reactor’s former historical researcher joined and started posting trivia questions. They deserved the boost based on all they did to bring their membership to 84 people. It took six months to get our Hanford Education & Outreach Facebook page to 70 people. Because of this group linking to us, we’re now up to 101! This dedicated team talked to friends, visited the CREHST Museum and shot informative videos to upload, walked Richland’s streets with signs advertising gift card raffles for people joining their group and “liking” our page, and impressed the B Reactor staff. The icing on the cake: 23 lucky Facebook group members were offered a special tour of the B Reactor.
The last group created the original, animated video What’s In Hanford’s Backyard?, overviewing Hanford history and cleanup and focusing on why it matters to young people. Their process included researching the issues, writing a detailed script including the narrator’s lines and the accompanying drawings, recording the voice-over, drawing the animations, and finally editing it all into one fabulous movie.
Next step: Going viral.
These students have far exceeded the course goals and our expectations, navigating difficult rhetorical situations in writing and in real-time and communicating about extremely technical subjects while making them understandable to their audience. They’ve become more skilled at collaboration, document design, public speaking, project management, and plain ol’ problem solving. And, did I mention that they reached over 600 other students in less than a month?!
By Dieter Bohrmann, Communications Manager, Nuclear Waste Program
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