A technical review of the treatment plant on the grounds of the former Hanford nuclear site identified hundreds of "design vulnerabilities" and other weaknesses, some serious enough to lead to spills of radioactive material, the Washington Post reported.
Located in eastern Washington, Hanford houses millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste, much of it in leaky underground tanks. For years, engineers have unsuccessfully looked for a safe way to dispose of the waste.
The US Department of Energy has poured tens of millions of dollars into the Low-Activity Waste Facility, intended to convert some of Hanford's radioactive waste into a glasslike product to be stored underground, the Post reported.
A 2014 report marked "predecisional draft," a copy of which was provided to the Post, identified serious design flaws in the waste facility. No final version of the report has been released.
"Unless resolved in a timely manner, these vulnerabilities are expected to result in unacceptable risk to the overall project mission," stated the report, prepared by a team of scientific and technical experts under Energy Department oversight.
An Energy Department spokesman said the report was a "very early draft" that contained a number of factual inaccuracies.
"The Department is committed to designing, building and safely operating" the waste facility, spokeswoman Yvonne Levardi told the Post. "While the draft report has not been finalized, it does not identify any unknown major technical issues with the Low Activity Waste Facility."
Tom Carpenter, Director of Hanford Challenge, the nonprofit watchdog group that first received the leaked report then passed it to the Post, called it "alarming," suggesting a "safety-last culture" at the clean-up site.
"This plant is so riddled with design … nuclear safety and worker health threats that it is hard to see how this plant could ever open without very significant and expensive rework," Carpenter said.
An unidentified Hanford engineer said he leaked the report because he was frustrated that the government failed to release it to the public.
"Some of the issues, if not resolved, will result in millions of dollars of cost to the tax payer, and could possibly result in injuries to the future workers. This is simply unacceptable," the engineer said in a statement.
