The two US Department of Energy (DOE) offices – the Richland Operations Office and Office of River Protection (ORP – responsible for undertaking the Hanford Site’s environmental clean-up work have been combined as the Hanford Field Office.
The Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state hosts 177 underground waste storage tanks – a legacy of nuclear weapons development and nuclear energy research during World War II and the Cold War.
The Richland Operations Office had been in place since the late 1960s after the Hanford Site transitioned from the US Atomic Energy Commission. In 1989, the mission of the Hanford Site and the Richland Operations Office changed from national security to environmental clean-up.
Congress created the ORP as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999. ORP was established to provide a singular focus on delivering the capability to safely treat chemical and radioactive waste stored in the massive underground tanks at Hanford.
“With the capability of large-scale tank waste treatment now in the commissioning process through the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste facilities programme, the objective for which ORP was created has been effectively achieved,” said Brian Vance, manager of the ew Hanford Field Office.
“Over the last several years, we’ve taken organisational steps to address redundancies between the offices, realising efficiencies and enhancing our alignment toward achieving our cleanup goals. The office combination is the logical next step in establishing an integrated and galvanised enterprise to successfully lead the full scope of the cleanup mission into the future,” Vance added.
