New agreement on Hanford waste comes to HR

Public comments may be added online until Aug. 2, at tinyurl.com/TPA-CD-Changes.

A meeting in Hood River will take place July 11 at 6 p.m. at the Hood River Hotel, 102 Oak St. Join online at bit.ly/3K27mQ4 (via Microsoft Teams).

The settlement is made between the federal government, Washington State, the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE), Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The new agreement will keep the current timeframe for cleanup of low- and high-level waste.

Much of the high-level waste would be disposed of by turning it into glass and burying it deep in a geological deposit.

This agreement also includes a plan to grout low-activity waste, and dispose of it off-site. Under this plan, low-activity waste from 22 tanks in Hanford’s West Area would be retrieved and grouted by 2040.

The agreement would also include building a waste transfer vault, and a second effluent management facility, to treat high-level waste.

A multi-purpose storage facility, able to contain one million gallons, would be constructed in the 200 West Area to support tank waste retrieval.

Some current facilities would get configuration changes, and permit changes.

The agreement also includes developing new technology for retrieving this waste.

“We are being asked to comment on major potential changes to the Hanford cleanup, including: a new proposal for high-level tank waste treatment, the shipment of tank waste to other communities in Utah and/or Texas, and radioactive waste shipments through Oregon and Washington communities. We are also being asked to accept the principle that it is okay to turn tank waste into grout rather than glass,” read a statement from Simone Anter, staff attorney and Hanford program director at Columbia Riverkeeper.

Email questions to DOE’s Jennifer Colborn at Jennifer.Colborn@rl.doe.gov, EPA’s Beth Clemons at Clemons.Beth@epa.gov or Ecology’s Ryan Miller at Ryan.Miller@ecy.wa.gov.