DOE cleanup boss White touts $7.6B budget request before Armed Services panel

The Joe Biden administration’s $7.6-billion budget request for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office should help the agency begin conversion of low-activity radioactive tank waste into glass at the Hanford Site in Washington state, and other key remediation chores, William (Ike) White told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee Wednesday.

The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) “is treating radioactive and chemical waste from large underground tanks for the first time ever on a large scale,” White, senior adviser for the office, told the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on Strategic Forces.

The budget request paves the way for treatment of one million gallons of tank waste through the Tank Side Cesium Removal system at Hanford by the end of fiscal 2023, White said in his written testimony. About 200,000 gallons have already been treated since the Tank Side Cesium Removal module started operating in January, the manager of the Hanford Site told a National Academies of Sciences panel Tuesday in Richland, Wash.

White told the Congressional panel the budget request supports vitrification of low-activity tank waste at Hanford by the end of the 2023 calendar year. Importantly, the request also includes $316 million toward development of vitrification facilities for high-level waste at the Waste Treatment Plant, he added. The DOE plans to start turning high-level tank waste into glass in the 2030s.

At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Salt Waste Processing Facility should double its throughput to six million gallons in fiscal 2023, up from three million gallons during its first 12-month period of radioactive operations, White said.

“As a result, the Savannah River Site could complete the bulk of its tank waste treatment mission in a decade,” White said.

At the Idaho National Laboratory, the request supports the first year of radiological operations of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit. Despite glitches in a final demonstration run with simulant, White said the facility will ultimately convert about 900,000 gallons of liquid waste into a granular solid. 

“EM also will meet another key commitment to the state of Idaho by completing the transfer of EM-owned spent nuclear fuel to on-site dry storage,” White said.