After lengthy investigation into Walt Tamosaitis’s allegations at Hanford’s colossal Waste Treatment Plant, a federal nuclear safety board finds “significant failures” by the Department of Energy and its contractors.
In a stunning letter to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a federal board charged with overseeing safety policies and practices at U.S. government nuclear plants has leveled remarkably harsh criticism of Department of Energy and contractor management at Hanford’s $12.2 billion Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The WTP is the centerpiece of the site’s decades-long cleanup mission which, among other things, confronts the herculean task of immobilizing plutonium and high level radioactive and chemical wastes that are presently stored in 177 aging underground storage tanks.
Hanford's Waste Treatment Plant under construction. (Bechtel photo).
The June 9th letter from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) stems from an investigation into charges by Dr. Walter Tamosaitis, a senior manager for URS, a leading subcontractor on the WTP project, the design and construction of which is being managed by Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI). The construction project has been underway for several years and since Bechtel took over in 2000, the estimated cost to complete the project has nearly quadrupled. It is not expected to be completed until 2019.
Tamosaitis was assigned to the project six years ago to lead an effort to address a strong critique of the project by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO). But after he raised safety concerns about the design of the plant’s waste pretreatment system, Tamosaitis found himself being literally ushered off the Hanford site last summer, and then assigned to a new job where, as the DNFSB put it, “Dr. Tamosaities sits in a basement cubicle in Richland with no meaningful work.”
In its letter to Secretary Chu, the DNFSB said its investigation ran from last July until May of this year during which it reviewed tens of thousands of documents and interviewed 45 witnesses. From this investigation, the board reported, it “determined that the prevailing safety culture at the WTP is flawed and effectively defeats” Secretary Chu’s mandate to instill a strong safety culture at DOE nuclear facilities.
“The Board’s investigative record demonstrates that both DOE and contractor project management behaviors reinforce a subculture at WTP that deters the timely reporting, acknowledgment, and ultimate resolution of technical safety concerns.”
The two findings the DNFSB reported to Chu were:
*”A Chilled Atmosphere Adverse to Safety Exists.”
* “DOE and Contractor Management Suppress Technical Dissent.”
The board’s account of Tamosaitis’s treatment reads almost as though it is describing the travails of a political prisoner. But it also reports on the experiences of other workers and experts about the depth of the safety culture problems at Hanford.
“One safety expert explicitly testified that employees would not and did not use the [employee concerns] program, and believed that individuals running the program would ‘bury issues’ brought to them,” the board reported.
The DNFSB letter then goes on to describe what happened to an expert witness–a nuclear safety professional–that the DNFSB invited to testify before the board in October 2010. After the expert’s testimony conflicted with that of senior DOE management at Hanford, the letter reports, “the testimony of several witnesses confirms that the expert witness was verbally admonished by the highest level of DOE line management at DOE’s debriefing meeting following this session of the hearing.”
“Management behavior of this kind creates an atmosphere in which workers are reluctant to speak candidly for fear of retribution or criticism,” the board wrote to Secretary Chu. “Whether or not this behavior possibly violates federal law is not for the Board to determine; however the Board does assert that fear of retribution visited on a competent professional for offering an honest opinion in a public hearing is incompatible with the objective of designing and building a safe and operationally sound nuclear facility and sustaining a healthy safety culture.”
As we reported in March, Tamosaitis is suing the Energy Department and its contractors.
It’s pretty clear the findings of the DNFSB will help his case.
“The Board finds that the specific technical issues identified by Dr. Tamosaitis in his July 16, 2010 letter were known and tracked by the WTP project,” the board’s letter reads. “In a WTP project managers’ meeting on July 1, 2010, Dr. Tamosaitis raised safety concerns related to the adequacy of vessel mixing, technical justifications for closing mixing issues, and other open technical issues. The next day he was abruptly removed from the project. This sent a strong message to other WTP project employees that individuals who question current practices or provide alternative points of view are not considered team players and will be dealt with harshly.”
You can download the full DNFSB letter here.
–Tim Connor
