Within 10 years, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management hopes to have its vitrification plant humming at the Hanford Site in Washington state, with 40% of the tanks closed at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and also be about done with legacy cleanup at the Moab Site in Utah as well the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.
Those are some of the big-ticket goals detailed Tuesday by the Environmental Management (EM) office in its Strategic Vision for 2021 through 2031. The 53-page document arrived a month after EM issued its priorities for 2021.
“We have many goals at our sites, including transformational progress in addressing tank waste challenges, demolishing contaminated buildings, remediating contaminated soil and groundwater, safely managing and disposing of waste, and completing work at projects and sites,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management William (Ike) White said Tuesday in a press release.
In addition to starting conversion of low-activity tank waste at Hanford into a glass form by the end of 2023, over the next 10 years EM should also transfer cesium and strontium capsules to an above-ground dry storage pad from nearby underwater storage at the Hanford’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility. At Savannah River, 22 of the 51 underground waste tanks will be emptied. At the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the cleanup office said a new underground ventilation system should be completed and provide enough airflow to enable salt mining and underground waste disposal to be done at the same time.
At the Idaho National Laboratory, the DOE cleanup office said not only should the long-delayed Integrated Waste Treatment Unit begin operation in 2021 but it should finish treatment of sodium-bearing waste by 2031. At the Nevada National Security Site, the last two remaining industrial sites, the Engine Maintenance Assembly and Disassembly facility and Test Cell C structures, should be demolished and remediated by the end of 2028.
At the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Action Project in Utah, DOE should complete the relocation and disposal of the tailings pile by the end of 2029 and have the project fully remediated by the end of 2031, according to the document.
Operation of the new Mercury Treatment Facility, now under construction at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, should commence in 2025, according to the document.
Some environmental advocates contacted for their input by Weapons Complex Monitor gave the document mixed reviews.
“The document is not so much a strategic vision but a list of known things that need to be done at the various sites with target dates put by them,” Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch, said by email. “We may see hints of future clean-up priorities in the DOE budget request that will soon be rolled out.”
Hanford Challenge executive director Tom Carpenter said he found much to like, and some issues of concern in the document. In the latter category he listed DOE’s continued interest in potential re-classification of some high-level radioactive waste.
Don Hancock, the director of the Nuclear Waste Safety program and administrator at Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center, said suggestions he submitted on the 10-year vision statement last November were largely ignored in the final version. In five-pages of suggestions at the time, Hancock urged DOE to start planning for a new underground disposal site to one day replace the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Hancock also said the cleanup office’s mission seems to be shifting from remediation of decades of Manhattan Project and Cold War contamination to focus more on debris being generated from new and planned defense projects.
