The Tri-Party Agreement for the Hanford Site in Washington state has been amended to delete the requirement that the Department of Energy submit a 2017 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report to its state and federal regulators in January. The department has been required under the Tri-Party Agreement to prepare the report annually as the result of negotiations for the 2010 court-enforced consent decree governing environmental remediation at the former plutonium production site. The 2016 report released early this year estimated the remaining costs for Hanford cleanup and oversight through 2090 at $107.7 billion.
The Tri-Party Agencies – DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington state Department of Ecology – said in an announcement Wednesday that substantial regulatory realignments led to the waiver. The 2010 consent decree has been modified with milestones extended for work at the waste tank farms and Waste Treatment Plant; milestones for Hanford’s Central Plateau cleanup have been changed and deadlines extended; and another set of new milestones covers the retrieval from temporary burial and packaging of transuranic waste at Hanford.
“These realignments will result in significant re-planning of associated work scope, schedules and costs that will not be completed in time to be fully reflected in the 2017 Lifecycle Report,” the announcement said. The Tri-Party Agencies said they agreed DOE should focus on annual life-cycle reports after 2017.
