DOE CONSIDERING NEW ‘TWCS’ FACILITY FOR HANFORD TANK WASTE

The Department of Energy is developing plans for the construction of a new facility at Hanford intended to aid efforts to address tank waste, Weapons Complex Monitor has learned. The new facility, dubbed "TWCS," (Tank Waste Characterization and Staging) is likely to be a significant component of DOE’s plans for finalizing the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, currently expected to be publicly released sometime this summer. According to officials familiar with the project, which is in the early planning stages, the TWCS facility would be used for staging and blending waste taken from Hanford’s tanks for feed into the WTP. DOE had previously planned to use Hanford’s double-shell tanks for that purpose, but that option appears to have fallen out of favor after a leak was found in the inner shell of one of the double-shell tanks. The facility, which also could have as many as six tanks, would also give DOE additional tank space capacity if further issues are discovered in Hanford’s single-shell or double-shell tanks.

Also under consideration is additional capabilities for the TWCS facility that would it allow it to condition the waste before it entered the WTP, and thereby reduce or eliminate concerns over ensuring adequate waste mixing and erosion/corrosion issues. DOE had previously intended for a waste conditioning facility to be part of the tank waste mission, but later decided to cut it as part of a cost cutting initiative conducted by former Assistant Energy Secretary for Environmental Management Ines Triay, officials said. Very preliminary estimates for the TWCS facility put its price tag at approximately $250 million, based largely on DOE’s experience with an interim salt waste treatment system at the Savannah River Site known as the Actinide Removal Process and Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit (ARP/MCU), according to officials familiar with the project.

In a brief written response yesterday, Carrie Meyer, a spokeswoman for DOE’s Office of River Protection at Hanford, said, "All tank waste will be characterized prior to transfer to the Waste Treatment Plant to ensure the waste meets the facility’s waste acceptance criteria. The Department is assessing options that would perform that function."