Lethal And Leaking

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Well, that's what critics accuse the U.S. Department of Energy of: making the same mistakes over and over in a project that has already squandered billions of dollars in taxpayers' money. But the risk here is far greater than financial, since it involves highly toxic nuclear waste.

At stake are millions of gallons of radioactive liquid waste left over from the making of nuclear bombs, including the one that was dropped on Nagasaki. This waste has been sitting in underground tanks in Hanford, Wash., ever since, while the government tries to figure out how to clean it up. As correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, the waste is so lethal that a small cup of it would kill everyone in a crowded restaurant, in minutes.

It is contaminated by waste left over from the production of nuclear weapons. There are 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored in underground tanks that are now so old they have leaked one million gallons of the stuff.

Some of it leaked into the groundwater, and it's heading right for the river. With a million people downstream, there's a sense of urgency about cleaning up the site, which is huge. It takes up 586 square miles in southeastern Washington.

But for the Energy Department, which runs the project, it's been a case of easier said than done. In the nearly 16 years 60 Minutes has been covering this story, it's been one foul up after the next.

Charles Anderson, the Energy Department's official overseeing nuclear clean up, gave Stahl a tour of what has been built so far at Hanford, starting with a replica of the underground tanks.

"This is a model of tanks that are already built that have waste in them. Be careful with your head here as we go in," Anderson told Stahl during the tour.

The tank can hold 750,000 gallons of waste. Many of the tanks, built for the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapons, are more than 60 years old.

Anderson explains there are a total of 177 tanks holding "high-level" waste at this site.

The plan is to pump the waste out of the tanks and route it through miles of pipes to a yet-to-be-completed pre-treatment facility. The idea is to convert the radioactive waste into glass logs.

"This is where the radioactive waste will come from the tank farms, will come from those tanks and will come in here and be treated in different chemical processes and be turned into glass logs for final disposition to be disposed of in a landfill," Anderson explains.

Stahl last visited the area in 2001, when the site was just a field. Anderson says significant progress has been made. "The plant's 35 percent complete in regard to construction," he says.

But the place is a total ghost town. What happened?

What happened here is that after three years of welding, pouring cement and laying miles of pipes and tons of steel, construction came to a screeching halt in 2005 because the Energy Department underestimated by 40 percent how strong the building must be to withstand an earthquake. We're talking about a building that would be full of radioactive liquid.

"In a building like this, you need to build it to ensure that it withstands whatever an earthquake may pose - if there is one - because we absolutely do not want a breech of this radioactive material in the atmosphere," says Gene Aloise of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress' investigative arm.

But here's what 60 Minutes has learned: that the Energy Department and the contractor, Bechtel, went ahead with the plant knowing their seismic standard might be off. Just as construction was about to begin in July 2002, an independent safety board sent a letter, warning the department.

"Energy debated with the safety board for almost two years over the standards," says Aloise.

"Ok, let me understand this. This is brought up as an issue in 2002. Instead of going back right then, they debate until 2005, during which time they're building the building?" Stahl asked Aloise.

"They're building the building," he replied.

They were building it using the wrong seismic standard. Because they did factor in some margin of safety, the contractor, Bechtel, has told the Energy Department there is no restructuring required on the foundation or the walls.

But Aloise says what they do have to fix are the internal components of the building. "Hangers, piping, vessel supports, all of this interior of the building, where the technology's going to rest. That all has to be re-engineered," he explains. "They have to re-do tens of thousands of designs."

The seismic miscalculation is costing at least $800 million and a two- to four-year delay in completing the building. This practice of pushing ahead with construction before the engineering is complete is known as "fast track."

"The people in the state of Washington who are living with this thing, they don't want it to slow down, they want it to speed up," Stahl remarked.

"But it doesn't work in our view on complex, technical nuclear facilities like the ones in Hanford," Aloise replied.

Asked what he would tell the people of Washington, Aloise said, "That we need to do it right."

Fast track was singled out as a major problem five years ago when 60 Minutes last reported on the cleanup.

Gary Jones, a GAO investigator in 2001, told 60 Minutes that they had rushed ahead with construction of this building at a similar site in Idaho before the designs were finished. We asked about it back then.

"You're saying they went ahead and built the building and then when they were finished making all the changes, the equipment wouldn't fit in the building?" Stahl asked Jones in the report five years ago.

"The equipment for this particular process would not fit into the building as designed," Jones replied.

Five years ago, 60 Minutes was assured the government had learned from its mistakes and things were finally under control. And yet, since then, costs have gone through the roof, up more than 150 percent, and the start date for making those glass logs has slipped seven years, to 2018. The seismic error was only one of several snafus.

Tom Carpenter of the watchdog group called Government Accountability Project got hold of internal Energy Department and Bechtel documents which reveal a series of problems with a special tank for processing or scrubbing the nuclear waste. The problems began when Bechtel hired an outside vendor to build it.

"They gave the wrong design specs to the manufacturer," says Carpenter. … "They gave them a less strict nuclear design."

According to the documents, when the tank arrived at Hanford it had "cracked stay welds." They were fixed. But then "different types of weld defects" were discovered. And yet Bechtel went ahead and installed the scrubber tank anyway.

"They still said, 'We can fix those when the tank's installed.' So they went ahead and installed it with defects, all right?" Carpenter says. "Knowing it, okay. So at this point they, Bechtel, demanded and then received a $15 million bonus for meeting a milestone."

Bechtel wouldn't give 60 Minutes an on-camera interview, but did say that the $15 million wasn't a "bonus," it was a fee. In any event, after they got the money, a "new deficiency was discovered" by "independent inspectors for Washington state."

This new deficiency, says Carpenter, was discovered after the tank was installed.

Carpenter says, "The red flag goes up and a full inspection is then ordered on the tank. Well, the full inspection should've been done at the factory where they built the tank."

Asked whether this inspection was part of the contract, Carpenter says, "Sure."

The full inspection finally led Bechtel to realize the tank was not up to specification. But Carpenter says that's not all.

"The design flaws that led to this tank being deficient applied to 66 other vessels," Carpenter explains. "Seven of which had already been built…. And they had to go and redesign the ones that had not been built, and fix the ones that had been built. It really raises a big question about, well, what have they not caught out there? What other equipment or tools, or machine, is installed maybe under feet of concrete that these programs failed to catch? Because their programs failed. The contractor failed. The Department of Energy failed. It took an independent inspector to find new deficiencies. Where is the adult supervision here? We're talking a nuclear facility handling some of the worst waste in the world, and they're fast tracking it? Excuse me."

60 Minutes asked Charles Anderson of the Department of Energy about this.

"When you hear they gave the wrong design specifications — you almost can't believe it – on one piece of equipment, and then when you hear it's been repeated over and over, I mean, that doesn't sound like the Department of Energy is managing the situation very well," Stahl said.

"There's a number of those issues that have occurred. Those issues have been identified and corrected but there's also a large, large percentage of equipment where the specs have been correctly given, the equipment's been purchased correctly," Anderson replied.

"But there shouldn't be mistakes like that in a plant like this, should there?" Stahl asked.

"Well, Lesley, in a large complex facility, a project like this, you do have mistakes," he replied.

Anderson acknowledged they are big mistakes. "I would agree that there are big mistakes here that we are taking control of and we're correcting," he says.

"You know, I'm getting a little deja vu here because when we were here in 2001 it was the same thing. 'We figured it out. It's better now. No problem any more.' Do you think, being candid with us, that the department's up to this?" Stahl asked.

"Well here's what's different now. We've taken steps to provide increased oversight, to reach out for increased external reviews," Anderson replied. "To complete this important work of disposing of, stabilizing and then disposing of this waste."

Anderson says that the leaking tanks have been stabilized and that there's virtually no chance of further seepage. But Christine Gregoire, the governor of Washington State, who has worked on this issue from the beginning, doesn't believe that for one minute.

"Let me tell you the story. 1989: They told me there was zero chance that there would be any leakage and ground water contamination. Sixteen years later, we have confirmed 67 leakers, groundwater contamination. I told them then, 'Gravity works like this.' And I'll tell them again today: gravity means we are very vulnerable to the groundwater contamination and a plume that we now have moving towards the Columbia River, which is the lifeline of our Pacific Northwest," Gov. Gregoire says.

Asked what she meant by a "plume," the governor said, "We've got an area that is contaminated in the groundwater and is migrating towards the Columbia River. And if it gets there, Lesley, we have an absolute disaster on our hands."

She's worried about a move in Congress to cut the budget for the Hanford clean-up.

"I can understand the frustration in Congress," the governor says. "Frankly, they are no more frustrated than me. But the last thing we need is to send a message to this country that it's OK to walk away. It is not. The chances of a catastrophic event over there are real. Time is not on our side. We need to get going."

Produced By Rich Bonin