The Department of Energy expects to miss a legally binding Aug. 1 milestone for starting cold commissioning, making glass from non-radioactive liquid, at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
DOE’s site manager for the former plutonium production complex, Brian Vance, told the Washington Department of Ecology of the delay on Thursday. The delay was first reported by the Tri-City Herald newspaper. DOE does not believe the delay will affect the start of liquid waste treatment at the plant, currently penciled in for next summer.
Washington State quickly agreed to what DOE described in a June 20 letter as a “modest” four-month delay. The agencies shared the letter with the Exchange Monitor.
“Today, the Department is notifying the states of Oregon and Washington that resolving equipment issues and moving into cold commissioning will take longer than the August 1, 2024, date in the Consent Decree with the State of Washington,” Vance said in a memo to Hanford Site employees. “The expected date for starting cold commissioning is November 29, 2024,” Vance added.
Cold commissioning involves making glass from a liquid meant to simulate radioactive waste.
“Energy has communicated they don’t expect this delay to impact hot commissioning of the plant by August 2025,” Ecology spokesperson Ryan Miller said in an email to Exchange Monitor. That would be the point when DOE starts to make glass cylinders from actual radioactive waste. “We are reviewing the notification now,” Miller said.
The projected four-month delay is due to “relatively minor equipment issues,” Vance said in the memo. “Fixing the equipment before we introduce a simulated waste with chemicals into the facility is a priority.”
The consent decree recognizes there will be problems along the way and DOE is working to fix them, Vance said. DOE remains “committed to starting hot commissioning of the Low-Activity Waste Facility using actual tank waste in 2025,” Vance said.
There are roughly 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive and hazardous waste in underground tanks at Hanford. The waste remains from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons during World War II and the subsequent nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.
DOE and Bechtel, which started work under its construction contract, currently valued at $15.5-billion, in December 2000, planned to start immobilizing some of the less radioactive waste into a glass form in 2025.
Robert Irwin, DOE’s acting assistant manager for the Waste Treatment Plant, elaborated on some of the issues in his June 20 letter to Stephanie Schleif, nuclear waste program manager for the state Ecology Department.
There was a May 29 briefing between state and federal officials. The session “largely focused on technical issues with the glass former system, which has been an emergent challenge for the project’s ability to supply the feed vessels” in the Low-Activity Waste Facility, Irwin said.
DOE’s contractor consulted with experts in bulk-solids handling “who recommended modifications to the glass former system,” and that work is continuing, Irwin said. Other equipment glitches and “overall reliability of the mechanical handling system represent additional technical challenges actively being worked to resolution,” Irwin said.
DOE is looking at fixes, including “receiving premixed material to temporarily bypass the existing glass former system, as well as, in the long term, improving the overall reliability of the system via additional modifications,” Irwin said.
