nuclear-news

For more than a month, coronavirus has brought cleanup of a 586-square-mile decommissioned nuclear production complex in south-eastern Washington state to a near standstill.

Most of the more than 11,000 employees at the Hanford site were sent home in late March, with only essential workers remaining to make sure the “most toxic place in America” stays safe and secure.

Now with signs that Washington has turned a corner with the virus and the state’s governor slowly starting to relax some safety measures, Hanford workers are looking at the very real possibility of returning to work.

But after facing those initial few weeks of Washington’s coronavirus crisis on-site at Hanford, workers say they received little information and even fewer safety measures from leadership, and some employees are terrified by the prospect.

“When you come back to work, what’s the expectation [for protections]?” asked a maintenance and operations worker at Hanford, who asked not to be identified by the Guardian to protect his job. “There are none.”……..

After Washington health officials reported the first US death associated with coronavirus in late February and then, with each passing week, were documenting the most cases in the country, employees say it remained business as usual at Hanford, where the cleanup project is run by the federal Department of Energy, with work completed through contractors.

During those first few weeks, workers recall receiving little guidance on site-specific coronavirus safety measures. They say information from Hanford officials tended to be overly broad, focusing on the nationwide situation rather than the unique needs of workers in a state that was at that time at the center of the US coronavirus crisis.

A radiological control technician, who has worked at Hanford for more than 15 years, said trailers continued to be shared by as many as 50 people and each Monday morning 200 employees would come together for a meeting in a single room.

When workers finished at one of the many contaminated areas of Hanford, they needed to be checked for radiation before leaving. Technicians would stand next to them, without a mask on, running a handheld device over their body – being sure to stay within a quarter of an inch of their skin to ensure accurate readings.

In a single hour, one of these radiological control technicians, may have surveyed as many as 30 people.

“There’s no way to keep that social distancing. You’re right up in somebody’s face, they’re breathing on you, they’re sweaty,” said the technician, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation at work.

Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Hanford Challenge, a not-for-profit watchdog organization in Seattle, said he received at least 10 emails and phone calls in two weeks in March from employees worried about Hanford not providing face masks or gloves or requiring social distancing to protect them from coronavirus.

“Workers were highly distressed about their own health and safety, and felt that management was not taking this issue seriously,” he said.

“Stop works”, a protocol at Hanford in which an employee notices something is unsafe or hazardous and work is halted until officials can fix the problem, became so frequent on issues related to coronavirus, said the radiological control technician, that little work was actually getting done.

…….. It wasn’t until 25 March – after Governor Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home mandate, which involved the closure of all non-essential companies (Hanford is considered essential) – that the site switched to a state of essential mission-critical operations.

The site will remain functioning in this capacity through at least Friday. It’s unclear whether this will be renewed beyond then.

Carpenter said the concern over the lack of protection is about more than keeping workers safe from coronavirus. He said if the virus were to get passed throughout Hanford, it could put the highly sensitive work being done there in jeopardy. …… Carpenter said Hanford officials have reported that two workers have been diagnosed with coronavirus, but he said, “there’s almost assuredly more”…..  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/04/hanford-nuclear-waste-site-coronavirus-washington