REMAINING HANFORD CLEANUP COST NOW $113.6B
WC Monitor
2/21/2014
An estimated $113.6 billion is the new price tag for completing the remaining Hanford cleanup, plus post-cleanup long term stewardship through fiscal 2090.The new estimate was included in the 2014 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report released this week. It’s the fourth such report released since they became an annual requirement added to the Tri-Party Agreement in 2010. The estimate is based on completing most cleanup work in 2060 and long term stewardship for another 30 years at a cost of $5.4 billion. The total estimated cleanup cost has gone down from last year’s estimate of $114.8 billion after a year of cleanup work and some adjustment of estimates. The Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection budget decreased to $58.1 billion from $59.6 billion in the last report, and the DOE Richland Operations Office budget increased from $55.2 billion in the 2013 report to $55.5 billion in the current report.
The lifecycle report is required to be based on completing work to meet all of DOE’s regulatory and cleanup obligations, which results in some unrealistic annual budget projections. In most recent years, the Hanford budget has been a little more than $2 billion and large increases are unlikely given the federal budget climate. But the lifecycle cost report projects budgets of more than $3 billion each of the next six years, including a budget of $4 billion in 2019. Projections show spending needs to remain above $2 billion—and most years above $2.5 billion—until 2046 to meet cleanup goals. Spending then would drop quickly to below $1 billion in 2049.
Many decisions on how to clean up Hanford remain to be made. For those projects, the report is required to make a plausible, upper-range estimate. Some estimates are based on projected costs that are expected to change. For instance, DOE has said that the costs for the $12.3 billion Waste Treatment Plant are likely to increase as technical issues are worked through, but a definite number has not been calculated to include in the latest lifecycle report. In the past the lifecycle reports have taken an in-depth look at a single project, but this year DOE and its regulators decided not to do that after considering the effort required to conduct those analyses and the benefits and insights gained from them. Comments on the report will be accepted until April 18.
DOE OUTLINES FY14 HANFORD CLEANUP PLANS
WC Monitor
2/21/2014
Work to prepare for cleaning up one of Hanford’s most notorious burial grounds, 618-10, will be accelerated with money in the Fiscal Year 2014 Hanford budget, according to the Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office. Other plans call for speeding up work to remove some contaminated soil in the 300 Area and continuing the momentum to complete demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant by a Tri-Party Agreement milestone of fall 2016, according to Matt McCormick, manager of the Richland Operations Office. His recent comments were the first time DOE had discussed the Hanford fiscal 2014 budget since Congress worked out a budget deal Jan. 13. The administration’s budget request, which was released in April, proposed a budget that about matched the budget for fiscal 2012 before sequestration reduced spending at Hanford in fiscal 2013.The budget finally approved by Congress for fiscal 2014 included $200 million more than the administration’s request for DOE’s nationwide environmental cleanup program. “The overall support, particularly the $200 million in environmental management, is a testament to the commitment and confidence Congress has in DOE’s environmental management program, which includes Hanford,” McCormick said.
Addl. Funds to Go to River Corridor Cleanup
About $20 million of the $200 million will go to Hanford to bring the budget for the budget of the Richland Operations Office to $1.013 billion, thanks to efforts of Sen. Patty Murray(D-Wash.). That’s in addition to restoring about $79 million for that office lost in fiscal 2013 to sequestration. The Richland Operations Office is focused on its 2015 Vision, which calls for the demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, continuing efforts to clean up contaminated groundwater and completion of most environmental cleanup on Hanford land along the Columbia River. Some $15 million of the additional $20 million will be used primarily for work in the river corridor. The money will allow DOE to build a full-scale mockup of a vertical pipe unit like those at the 618-10 Burial Ground about six miles north of Richland. The mockup will be used to test techniques to make sure they are safe and reliable before work starts on the vertical pipe units, McCormick said.
From 1954 to 1963 some of the worst of the research waste generated at Hanford’s 300 Area was trucked to the 618-10 Burial Ground. Waste, some of it highly radioactive, was packaged in cans and buckets and dropped down pipes buried vertically in the ground. Tentative plans call for driving a steel pipe into the ground around the pipes and then using an auger to smash up the waste, including the walls of the pipes. Different techniques then could be used to remove the waste, depending on its radioactivity. The additional money for river corridor cleanup also would be used to accelerate work that can be done now that a 1,153-ton vault and a 1,082-ton test reactor have been lifted out of the ground in the 300 Area. Work still must be done to clean up contaminated soil and piping and the underground concrete structure that housed the test reactor. Work on one of the most challenging projects remaining in the 300 Area, the highly radioactive spill beneath the 324 Building, already had been included in the administration’s budget request. A subcontract has been awarded this year for the engineering on a system to dig up the soil, working from within a hot cell of the building.
The remainder of the $20 million increase—$5 million—will bring the account for Richland community and regulatory support back to just under $20 million, the approximate level of previous years, for fiscal 2014. The account covers payment in lieu of taxes to local government and schools, the Hanford Advisory Board and Hanford regulatory activities, among other uses. The fiscal 2014 budget will allow momentum to continue to remove glove boxes and other highly contaminated equipment and prepare the Plutonium Finishing Plant for demolition, McCormick said. The project is on schedule to the Tri-Party Agreement milestone to have the plant down in September 2016, he said.
Groundwater Spending to Drop
Spending on groundwater cleanup will decrease in fiscal 2014 because of the completion of the construction and startup of Hanford’s largest and most complex groundwater treatment system, the 200 West Groundwater Treatment Facility. Work will continue to treat contaminated groundwater at multiple plants, but a project to expand protection of the Columbia River near the former N Reactor remains on the fence. DOE is discussing with Hanford regulators and its contractor whether an underground chemical barrier can be expanded this year or next, McCormick said. Injection wells have been drilled, but Hanford workers still need to inject chemicals that will form calcium phosphate, or apatite, that will chemically bind strontium and halt its migration toward the river.
DOE will continue work to build an annex at the K East Basin and purchase equipment needed to remove radioactive sludge that is stored in underwater containers at the basin. In a previous presentation on the current level of spending for the K Basins, DOE did not indicate that the $99 million budget would be enough to start sludge removal.
ORP Plans
The Hanford Office of River Protection has funding levels unchanged from the administration’s budget request released in April. It will have $690 million to spend in fiscal 2014 at the Waste Treatment Plant, the annual amount long-planned to provide steady funding to build the plant. The tank farms could have had as little $409 million if Congress had not agreed on a fiscal budget for this year, but will receive $520 million. Money will be spent to empty single-shell tanks, replace aging infrastructure and prepare to feed waste to the vitrification plant in the future.
