A 45-day comment period began Monday on proposed changes to the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) that governs cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The parties to the agreement – the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Washington state Department of Ecology – will accept comments through Nov. 29.
The state and EPA provide regulatory oversight of the Energy Department’s environmental remediation of the massively contaminated 580-square mile Hanford Site, which started produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear deterrence program in the 1940s during the Manhattan Project. The Tri-Party Agreement is a detailed cleanup and compliance agreement signed on May 15, 1989. The agreement, which is part legal document and part action plan, ranks and defines remediation commitments at the site, and establishes enforceable milestones.
Proposed modifications are designed to update the agreement to reduce redundancy and improve coordination between two regulatory processes for remediation — the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
Under the current situation, similar or identical work can be carried out under the two standards, but be subject to two separate records of decision and two separate cleanup timelines, according to a tentative agreement between the parties in July. The parties are now seeking to formally enact their understanding.
Among other things, the update will reflect completion of certain cleanup milestones.
The Energy Department in February released an updated life-cycle cost estimate for remediation of Hanford. Under a best-case scenario it could cost $323 billion, or more than triple a best-case scenario published three years earlier. In the 2019 report, the agency estimated it will take until 2079 to clean up the site, in a best-case scenario.
Comments can be emailed to [email protected].
Questions can be sent to Jennifer Colborn, communications specialists with DOE contractor Mission Support Alliance, at [email protected], or Daina McFadden, permit communications specialist for the state Department of Ecology, at [email protected].
A fact sheet on the process is here.
Separately, officials from the DOE Office of Environmental Management, the Washington state Department of Ecology, and the EPA plan to start negotiations later this fall on a mutually agreeable path forward on disposal of radioactive tank waste.
The Energy Department is seeking a better relationship with its state regulator. The state, meanwhile, fears the federal agency is not doing enough to protect against leaks from single-shell tanks holding 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste.
The state wants some new tanks installed before full operation by 2036 of the vitrification plant that will convert much of Hanford’s radioactive waste into a glass form for disposal. However, the Energy Department dislikes investing in what it deems a stopgap solution.
The parties plan to narrow the scope of the talks this month with an eye toward starting negotiations by early November.
