The Department of Energy and Bechtel announced Wednesday in an online ceremony that construction of facilities needed to start processing low-activity tank waste are complete at the $17-billion vitrification plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) facilities at the Waste Treatment Plant include a new Analytical Laboratory, the new Effluent Management Facility and 14 support facilities, said Bechtel’s Valerie McCain, project director for the plant.
There is much startup and commissioning left to be done, McCain said. The next big goal will be “heatup” of the first melter for the tank waste, which is expected within a year, she said. The equipment is designed to heat the waste and glass-forming material so that they can be combined into solidified, glass-like cylinders for easy disposal.
About 90% of the 56 million gallons of tank waste at Hanford is the less-radioactive low-activity waste, according to DOE.
Completion of world’s largest plant to treat radioactive waste marks “an unprecedented step toward cleaning up the most toxic site in the United States,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash), who with fellow Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), spoke to virtual attendees in a pre-recorded video.
“This has been 18 years in the making and it took over 2.3 million craft hours to build,” Cantwell said.
“Hanford is on the precipice of actual tank waste treatment,” said Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes, who attended the ceremony along with the DOE’s undersecretary for science, Paul Dabbar.
The DOE still expects to start up initial DFLAW processing at the vitrification plant by the end of 2023, Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance said during the online ceremony. However, a December amendment to the consent decree governing Hanford cleanup provides DOE and its contractors with pandemic-related leeway to extend the work into 2024.
COVID-19 has caused some delays and complicated work across the former plutonium production complex, Vance said in response to a question, adding that the extent of further virus-related delays is unknowable at this point.
Direct feed means that liquid waste from the 177 underground tanks will be pretreated near the tanks to remove radioactive cesium and solids and sent directly to the plant’s DFLAW system.
Consent Agreement Amended
In December, Judge Rosanna Peterson of the Eastern District of Washington approved a start-up delay of several months after a joint request from the Department of Energy and the Washington Department of Ecology. The Low Activity Waste Facility was previously to start treating waste by Dec. 31, 2023, under the now-modified consent decree governing Hanford cleanup.
Under a formula settled on by the parties, and excluding weekends and federal holidays, the deadline extension was roughly five months and counting, as of Wednesday. Add back the weekends and holidays and it’s roughly eight months.
The parties sought the extension after different Hanford projects went into limited operations in late March during the early days of the pandemic, restricting work at the former plutonium production site to essential maintenance until the summer.
When construction began on the Waste Treatment Plant in 2002, DOE was legally obligated to be able to treat both low-activity and high-level wastes by 2011. By 2008, Washington filed a federal lawsuit because the 2011 deadline appeared unreachable.
That resulted in a new deadline of 2019 to begin operations.
As it became apparent that the 2019 deadline would be missed, Judge Peterson in 2016 approved a new deadline to begin treating only low-activity wastes by Dec. 31, 2023.
