It is time for the Department of Energy to focus on ensuring two aging facilities for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Hanford Site in Washington state remain safe beyond the current 40-year design life, according to a recent DOE report.
The agency’s Office of Enterprise Assessments, in the report issued last month, recommends better safety programs be put in place for the Hanford Site’s Canister Storage Building and the adjacent 200 Area Interim Storage Area, which are both about mid-way through their design lives.
The DOE currently lacks requirements or guidance “that explicitly address the extended storage” of spent nuclear fuel, according to the document dated March 24. Collaboration is needed between DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, the Office of Environment Health Safety and Security as well as the Office of Nuclear Energy, according to the report.
Spent fuel dry storage at the two facilities is managed under the Central Plateau cleanup contract, which an Amentum-led group has managed since January. However, Jacobs subsidiary CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation was still in charge of the cleanup when the Office of Enterprise Assessments conducted its remote spent fuel storage review from Sept. 14, 2020 to Sept. 18, 2020, according to the report. The assessment team reviewed documents from 2019 and 2020 and also interviewed personnel from the site.
There are 412 multi-canister overpacks in below-ground storage tubes at the Canister Storage Building, which accounts for about 86% of the spent fuel inventory at Hanford by mass and more than 50 million curies of radioactivity, according to the report. The neighboring Interim Storage Area provides dry storage casks for above ground storage for various types of spent fuel with more than 10 million curies of radioactivity.
The report calls upon Richland Operations Office managers to consider “broadening the aging management program” at the two storage facilities to become more forward looking – considering not just current safety controls, but potential upgrades based on evolving DOE requirements.
Given uncertainty over when the DOE might develop a Yucca Mountain-like deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel, the material could remain at the Hanford facilities for decades, federal officials have said.
