Workers at the Hanford tank farms in southeast Washington state stopped work Monday after a group of unions in Richland called for a halt in the early morning. A union leader said that could mess with about 2,000 people’s schedules at the site.
There’s been really high scrutiny for years at the tank farms. Workers have repeatedly complained that they’re being sickened by whiffs of chemical fumes -- including headaches, nosebleeds, and lung problems.
The unions are demanding that each crew member be supplied with canned air to breathe through a mask when working with sludge in the tank farms until more is known about how to protect workers from tank vapors.
Washington River Protection Solutions, the contractor in charge of the tank farms, said it's honoring the stop-work order by the unions and said it will work with the unions to resolve it. Union leaders say they won’t be compromising.
Hanford is home to more than 50 million gallons of radioactive sludge stored in aging underground tanks not far from the Columbia River. This witch's brew of chemicals and radioactive waste is the leftovers of plutonium production for weapons during WWII and the Cold War.
Cleaning up this waste has fallen behind schedule for multiple deadlines set by stakeholders and the federal government.
