DOE OUTLINES PHASED APPROACH TO HANFORD VIT PLANT OPERATIONS

The Department of Energy late yesterday issued what it calls a new “framework” for addressing Hanford’s tank waste that envisions a phased approach to operation of the site’s Waste Treatment Plant, but largely stays within concepts that have been the works for several years.  The first phase would entail completing and initiating operation of the plant’s Low Activity Waste Facility by directly feeding waste into the facility, resolving the remaining technical issues at the WTP’s Pretreatment and High-Level Waste facilities and moving forward with plans to prepare material believed to be transuranic waste for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The second phase would involve completing the High-Level Waste Facility, as well as new “tank waste characterization and staging capability”; followed by a third phase of commissioning the Pretreatment Facility as well as a a “possible additional preconditioning capability” for harder to process material.

DOE’s new “framework,” which the Department says is intended to aid discussions with Washington state, contains many aspects, such as directly feeding the WTP’s LAW Facility, that have been under consideration for years. The new framework also does not contain details as to when the remaining technical issues at the WTP will be finally resolved, when waste treatment operations would begin at the WTP or the final price tag for the project. According to DOE, the proposed phased approach for WTP operations is “intended to provide optionality, flexibility, and redundancy for completing the tank waste cleanup mission.” The DOE document goes on to state, “Because a phased approach allows for LAW operations to begin before PT and HLW Facility construction is complete, and because the volume of low-activity waste is much higher than the volume of high-activity waste in Hanford’s tank farms, this approach has the potential shorten the overall duration of the tank waste mission.”