Workplace Climate of Retaliation at Hanford [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/cranestation/52801/workplace-climate-of-retaliation-at-hanford

Workplace Climate of Retaliation at Hanford
by CraneStation | November 21, 2013 - 8:48am

On Monday, Hanford whistleblower Donna Busche filed a new complaint against her employer, Department of Energy (DOE) contractor Bechtel, alleging retaliation in the workplace after she voiced concerns over safety issues at the huge Cold War era contaminated site. She alleges "URS and Bechtel officials excluded her from meetings and belittled her authority." She also alleges that "she has experienced continued harassment, isolation, exclusion, and unwarranted criticism as she tries to ensure that one of the largest environmental cleanup efforts in the world is completed safely."

For Hanford history, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) summarizes:

The Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for one of the world’s largest environmental cleanup projects: the reatment and disposal of millions of gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste at its 586-square mile Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State. A total of nine nuclear reactors––including the world’s first operating large-scale reactor, developed as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II––were built at Hanford and operated until the late 1980s. The primary mission of these reactors was to produce plutonium and other special nuclear materials for DOE’s nuclear weapons program. Some of the large volumes of hazardous and radioactive waste that resulted from nuclear materials production was deposited directly into the ground in trenches, injection wells, or other facilities designed to allow the waste to disperse into the soil, and some was packaged into drums and other containers and buried. The most dangerous waste was stored in 177 large underground storage tanks. The underground tanks currently hold more than 56 million gallons of this waste—enough to fill an area the size of a football field to a depth of over 150 feet.

Although getting any real information from a layperson's perspective is excruciating due to the secrecy of Hanford's operations for decades, we do know a few things. Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the western hemisphere, representing two thirds of our nation's nuclear waste by volume. The government owns and operates the site, and it uses contractors who, for lack of better language, like money for nothing. Years ago, there was a plan to construct a waste treatment plant, to process the waste into a stable glass.