Environment, Health & Safety
A CONVERSATION WITH ANTHONY FERNANDEZ
Anthony Fernandez has been at the Lab for almost 17 years. He came from the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant outside of Golden, Colo., where he worked in several positions before supervising a team during deactivation and decommissioning operations as the weapons plant was closed down. His best friend from Rocky Flats joined the Radiation Protection Group at the Lab and sold him on life in the Bay Area, and Fernandez joined the Waste Management Group.
What is your area of work?
I’m the Acting Waste Operations Manager at the Hazardous Waste Handling Facility, or HWHF, at building 85. The HWHF holds a permit from the state Department of Toxic Substance Control to collect hazardous, radioactive, and mixed wastes, those with both radioactive and hazardous properties, and store them prior to being shipped off-site for final disposition. Every waste container requisitioned through the WMG comes through this building. Every five weeks, we ship waste from the hill site and ship waste from the other Lab sites in Emeryville and Berkeley.
We work to provide customer service to our scientific partners in the way we handle waste. We have regulations that must be followed for our safety and the safety of those working in labs. For example, we pick up waste in the early morning, starting as early as 6 a.m., so we can complete the pick-up and be out of the researchers’ way.
What big challenge(s) are you hoping to solve with your work in the next 20 years?
The new waste management system will most likely still be with us in 20 years, so the challenge now is to implement it. The current system is nicknamed “Shoebox,” because as the story goes, the data on waste chemicals at the Lab was so sparse that it consisted of pieces of paper shoved into a shoebox. It debuted in 1997. The new system will provide more usability by the researchers as well as be more efficient for characterizing waste and easing the time spent for researchers requisitioning their waste containers. But a new system is only part of the solution. We want to partner with everyone involved in the waste requisition process; tell us what you need, and let us work with you to come up with a solution.
Safety is always a challenge. Those in waste management are professionals. They have strict guidelines on how to handle chemicals. I can’t imagine how any of us in the group would feel if there was a safety incident due to the mishandling of waste chemicals.
The system will likely be online next year. I’m happy to discuss it with anyone who would like more information since it will be with us for years.
Who would you like to partner with at the Lab to bring this vision to life?
This system is a partnership between EHS, others in Operations, and each laboratory. The disposal of waste may not get a lot of attention day to day, but research can come to a stop without waste disposal. It starts with communications. Anyone who produces hazardous and chemical waste is a partner. We can provide the best service only if we are communicating with everyone involved in the process.
Who from the past, present, or future would you like to collaborate with? And on what?
I want to work with someone from the future on advancing scientific solutions. I can’t fathom where science will be in 90 years. It may be that people working on these very hills at the Lab today and in the future will be working out solutions to the world’s problems and even the problems of other worlds yet unknown. You can read about the past, but imagining the future is limitless.