All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

Good Decision

Eleven Hanford “pipefitters,” who have been in legal proceedings against a federal contractor for being fired after refusing to test known unsafe equipment at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, have had their multi-million dollar victory from 2005 upheld by the Washington State Supreme Court. This ruling effectively ends an 11-year legal struggle for justice. From the Tri-City Herald:

In 2005, a Benton County jury found that the pipefitters had been wrongfully dismissed from their jobs at the Hanford nuclear reservation. The pipefitters said they were targeted as whistleblowers.

Hanford contractor Fluor Federal Services appealed the decision on several grounds, including what it believed were procedural errors in the case and a state Supreme Court ruling made since the jury verdict.

Eight state Supreme Court justices agreed in the appeal decision that the jury award was proper and that any errors in evidence presented at trial, including testimony of other witnesses who claimed they were retaliated against by Fluor, were harmless.

The ninth justice considering the case, Richard Sanders, said the decision should have gone further. In an opinion that dissented in part, he said the pipefitters also should have been awarded out-of-pocket costs, such as attorney travel costs, which amounted to 3 percent of the total award.

"The decision is an important vindication for the right of workers to raise important safety and health concerns at a federal nuclear site," attorney Tom Carpenter said in a statement. He helped pipefitters through the Government Accountability Project in the early years of the dispute.

"It vindicates their interests and the interest of the public, and will resonate throughout the Hanford site for decades to come," Carpenter said.

This is a wonderful and just decision. Click here to read the entire case background.

-- Dylan Blaylock  

Hanford Cleanup Needs Funding

An editorial in today’s Washington Post by the governor and junior senator of Washington state implores Congress to grant additional funding for cleaning up the Hanford site – the nation’s most contaminated federal nuclear reservation.

A new nonprofit, Hanford Challenge, recently spun off from GAP and is dedicated to improving the cleanup at Hanford.

The editorial outlines the subpar state of nuclear cleanup in this country while the Bush administration is advocating for an expansion of nuclear power. GAP teamed up with other groups last year to release a very critical report on GNEP, or the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. That program proposes to expand nuclear energy usage worldwide, and allows for other countries to ship nuclear waste to America.

-- Dylan Blaylock

Reassessing Terrorist Threat to Nuclear Reactors on College Campuses

Thirty-two nuclear research reactors, some still running on enriched uranium with the potential to create an atomic bomb, are located on college campuses across the country.  A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees campus reactors, has underestimated the risk and consequences of terrorist attacks on college campus nuclear reactors.  The New York Times article highlights the GAO’s report which is questioning “whether NRC’s assessment reflects the full range of security risks and potential consequences of an attack on a research reactor.” 

Several options for decreasing threats to college campus reactors and their communities could and should be taken.  The GAO’s strong report against mediocre NRC security policies hopefully will result in stronger action to ensure campuses do not become terrorist targets.

To view a map of campuses that have nuclear research reactors, click here.

Keeping An Open Mind While Workers get Sick

On July 27^th of this year, a spill involving nuclear waste occurred at the Hanford nuclear facility. Reports pegged it as the worst spill in years.

Over the past weekend, seven Hanford workers have reported medical symptoms that they believe are linked to the accident.

The CH2M Hill Hanford Group, the contractor in charge of the waste spill (and of the workers) has told the press that (according to reports) “based on its knowledge of the spill and the chemicals involved, it would not have expected workers to be exposed to enough chemicals to be harmed.” Nevermind that the symptoms, which include upper respiratory problems, blurred vision, and headaches, are quite similar to symptoms reported by Hanford workers in 2003 and 2004 that feared vapor inhalation.

Regardless of that, though, Thomas Anderson, CH2M Hill director of environmental health, was quoted in the Tri-City Herald as stating that “we’re keeping an open mind on this.”

More to come. 

GAP Letter to DOE Urges Review of Contractor

On August 21, 2007, GAP sent a letter to the new Manager of Department of Energy’s Richland Field Office requesting a review of the actions of Washington Closure Hanford (WCH), a government contractor company performing duties associated with the clean-up efforts at the Hanford nuclear facility in Southwest Washington state. GAP’s letter highlights WCH’s record of repeated safety violations, environmental violations, retaliatory work environments, and failures in proper management of its subcontractors, and requests consideration of suspending and/or debarring WCH from government contracting.

Vitrification Plant Construction to be Resumed

The DOE has announced that construction of the Hanford vitrification plant will recommence within 30 days. Work has been halted for the past two years as a result of drastically increased costs and seismic concerns. The seismic safety of the design has been increased so that the structure will be capable of withstanding a worst-case-scenario earthquake, but the estimated cost of the project has risen from $4.3 billion to over $12 billion. This facility has been chalk full of problems that GAP has previously exposed.

Court Decides Against Downwinders

The Tri-City Herald has reported that a federal court of appeals has overturned rulings in favor of four "downwinders" who believe that their health problems developed as a result of radioactive emissions from Hanford. The court agreed that contractors may be liable for injuries to those who lived downwind of Hanford when it was manufacturing weapons-grade plutonium. However, hundreds of plaintiffs' cases may have been irreparably damaged by the appeals court's decision that a plaintiff who files suit more than three years after being diagnosed has exceeded the statute of limitations and is therefore ineligible for compensation.

POGO Attacks LANL Security

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) is in the news after charging that security at LANL is severely insufficient. In a matter of months, sensitive information has been leaked multiple times through classified emails sent from unsecure computers, lost data discs, and - most recently - the release of information onto a facility-wide network. LANL denies that these issues are symptoms of a security problem, but POGO has expressed concern that the lab cannot get its act together despite fines, firings, and even a months-long shutdown.

Choosing to NOT Unearth the Evidence

In an ongoing case, over 1000   cancer-stricken workers from Ohio's Mound Plant nuclear weapons site have applied for cash compensation and medical benefits to treat the cancers that they believe were caused by radiation exposure. The cases are being stalled as DOE officials decide whether or not to unearth the records from the facility which would show the amount of radiation to which the workers were exposed. The records were buried in 2005, for the stated reason that the records themselves were contaminated - and it would cost $9 million to exhume them. Officials in charge of the decision now say that they can judge the workers’ cases without the records. Many workers fear that as long as the proof is buried, the government will be able to easily deny them compensation.

Basically, government officials are saying that records showing radiation exposure history, which they buried for being radioactive themselves, are too expensive to dig up and prove radiation exposure.

Right.

An Important Sentence

The New York Times reported today on a little-noticed one-sentence addition to the Senate’s energy bill. The provision could guarantee that builders of nuclear energy plants receive billions of dollars in loan guarantees from the government, and it gives the DOE power to approve an unlimited amount of such loan guarantees for “clean power generation” – including nuclear power.

The cost estimates for such projects are consistently low, and with plans to build as many as 28 nuclear power plants in the next few years, the public may become responsible for tens of billions of dollars in loans.