When a 20-pound box arrived at Douglas Korten's Richland home Saturday, he figured he'd scored something good for Christmas.

"We opened it, wanting to see what was inside," said Korten, who lives with his wife, Barbara, in the Hills West neighborhood. "At Christmastime, we were wondering who it was from."

It wasn't fruitcake.

Instead, it included a six-volume set that comprises the "Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Accomplishing Expanded Civilian Nuclear Energy Research and Development and Isotope Production Missions in the United States, Including the Role of the Fast Flux Test Facility."

Say what?

The Kortens looked again. The return address was the Department of Energy in Germantown, Md. And the postage tag said the reams of paper cost $31.85 to ship across the country -- to the wrong address.

That set back Douglas, who said neither he nor his wife have attended FFTF workshops or, for that matter, anything remotely linked to Hanford. "It's not something we have a personal interest in."

Curious, Barbara called the DOE office in Germantown, where she eventually was connected to someone who recognized what she was talking about.

"They told her just to throw it in the garbage," Douglas said. "Apparently, they have had a number of calls like this in the last week or so. ... This isn't the only copy they have mistakenly sent out."

At nearly $32 a pop for postage -- not to mention printing costs -- the Kortens were a bit peeved.

"They waste enough money as it is, but this is ludicrous," Barbara said.

Raj Sharma, at DOE in Germantown, helped create the final FFTF environmental impact statement. He said the Kortens were probably part of some small-scale miscommunication. The agency distributed about 500 of the 20-pound packages, but only to people who were on Hanford or FFTF mailing lists, Sharma said.

He did recall, however, that a few others had called recently about mistakenly getting the package. "But," he said, "I am not aware of a huge number of those calls."