Mr. Gary L. Robertson, Director
Office of Radiation Protection
Department of Health
7171 Cleanwater Lane, Bldg. #5
P.O. Box 47827
Olympia, WA 98504-7827

February 23, 2008

This is from the front page of today's The Olympian, of Olympia, Washington.

July 13, 2007

* Contaminated pond control - don't forget need to warn firefighting helicopters which might be looking for water, as occurred in State of Washington

October 25, 2006

* Richland school named after town condemned for Hanford
Sara Schilling, Tri City Herald (WA)

Richland's new elementary school will be named after the historic townsite condemned to make way for the Hanford nuclear reservation. ...

May 5, 2004

* Coal miners - important role in past, present & future of USA prompts State of Washington legislature to urge memorial postage stamp

March 10, 2004

* Hanford - decision re treating and disposing of waste expected after mid-March; DOE continues to discuss issues with State of Washington

* Hanford - injunction against waste from out-of-state until State's lawsuit resolved

* Hanford - State is willing to accept Cold War-related waste, but not post-1992 stuff from out-of-state

* Hanford - State referendum expected this fall to block out-of-state waste until cleanup complete

* Hanford - State decries continued disposal of waste in unlined trenches

* Hanford - State concerned at implications of labelling ground water as irreversibly contaminated

September 10, 2003

Potassium Iodide - Washington state health dept loosened restrictions

Before 9/11, potassium iodide was available at Washington pharmacies only with a prescription. But as residents began to buy it off the Internet ..., the state changed regulations to make it an over-the-counter drug. ... The Washington State Department of Health continues to recommend that people within 10 miles of the Energy Northwest nuclear reactor leave the area immediately if there is a disaster, without waiting to take a dose of KI. However, the agency sent out updated information on correct doses to doctors in the Tri-City area a few months ago for their patients who still want the pills.

[Source: Chris Mulick et al (Tri-City Herald staff writers), "Security constant since Sept. 11", Tri-City Herald, September 10, 2003]

August 21, 2003

*Washington - troxler gauge run over by car, dragged 90-feet, sources stayed intact

*Washington - employer failed to report 318-rem TLD result (although no question whether it was spurious)

August 18, 2003

* Columbia Generating Station - public dose has been overestimated because plateout factors for gaseous effluent monitor found to be lower than previously calculated

July 31, 2003

* Washington - 15 mCi Ni-63 foil source missing from gas chromatography cell (STL Seattle, Tacoma WA)

May 10, 2003

Stop-work order at Hanford -- State of Washington aghast that DOE actually did what state required. "You should have asked what we really meant to say"

The State of Washington issued an order on April 30 via its Department of Ecology. It was 14 pages long, and the federal Department of Energy had a variety of technical and legal staffers evaluate it for implication for the Hanford cleanup project. One sentence in the order requires that "DOE shall immediately stop creating a backlog of untreated mixed wastes." So DOE yesterday told its Hanford contractors to stop any work that creates new mixed waste. That's a lot of work being stopped. Ecology Dept spokesperson Sheryl Hutchison told reporter for local newspaper that the sentence was supposed to mean that the state wants DOE to treat any mixed waste as it is produced at Hanford, and that DOE should add new ways to treat mixed wastes. Governor Gary Locke thinks DOE is being unreasonable: "This rationale would be like your mother telling you not to let dirty dishes pile up in the sink, and you respond by not cleaning any dishes at all."

[Source: John Stang (Herald staff writer) "DOE halts major cleanup at Hanford", Tri-City Herald, May 10, 2003]

What's at the root of the troubled relationship between SOW and DOE? Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Lisa Stiffler puts it like this: "There are fears that the federal government wants to make the Eastern Washington site a national dump... Energy wants to send 170 barrels of waste to Hanford from other cleanup sites so they can be closed. In return, Ecology wants a written plan setting timetables for the removal of Hanford and offsite waste... In December, Ecology officials agreed to temporarily accept garbage contaminated with long-lived radioactive elements such as plutonium if DOE officials would agree by March 1 to a plan for the cleanup and removal of some 78,000 barrels of buried waste at Hanford. When that deadline was missed, Ecology filed a lawsuit to halt the import of the so-called transuranic waste. State officials then ordered DOE to create a plan for cleaning up the debris buried at Hanford in dirt trenches. The federal agency countered with a lawsuit appealing the order. Ecology issued a second order April 30 saying DOE had broken state laws by burying garbage tainted with radioactive materials and dangerous chemicals in dirt trenches that have leaked. DOE responded with the stop-work order." [Source: Lisa Stiffler, "DOE-Ecology dispute holds up Hanford cleanup", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 10, 2003]

May 2, 2003

A representative of the following organization completed the NRC training course "Transportation of Radioactive Materials Course (H-308)" in Chattanooga, Tennessee on April 28-May 2, 2003: