Staff Reports
WC Monitor
9/26/2014
The Department of Energy notified the states of Washington and Oregon this week that a third Hanford waste tank is at serious risk of not being emptied by the deadline in the 2010 court-enforced consent decree. DOE is required to have the 16 tanks in the C Tank Farm emptied by Sept. 30. “Ecology is disappointed that the U.S. Department of Energy won’t meet the requirement of the federal court order,” said the Washington State Department of Ecology in a statement. “We are also disappointed that U.S. DOE did not inform us when they expect to complete this requirement. The state continues to consider all options for addressing this and other consent decree requirements.”
DOE earlier notified the states that all the remaining deadlines for the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant in the consent decree were at serious risk of being missed. DOE and Washington state have until Oct. 5 for either to ask the federal court to intervene in consent decree requirements, following a period of negotiations that have so far been unsuccessful. The most recent consent decree notification is for Tank C-111, where equipment issues have delayed retrieval of waste. “While this delay is unfortunate, the department has completed retrievals of 13 single-shell tanks, and remains committed to completing tank retrievals in a manner that is protective of workers, the public and the environment,” DOE said in a statement. The 13 tanks include 12 at C Farm and Tank S-112, which is not covered by the consent decree. That leaves four C Farm tanks not declared empty to regulatory standards with the deadline days away.
Tank C-111 Has 35,000 Gallons of Waste Remaining
Tank C-111 has 35,000 gallons of waste remaining after pumping was last done in November 2010. Sluicing systems are installed in the tank to spray liquid at high pressure on waste to help break it up and move it toward a pump in the center of the tank, but hydraulic hoses in the systems have leaks and pumping has not resumed. For one of the other four C Farm tanks that have yet to meet regulatory requirements for retrieval, Tank C -112, DOE has asked the state for a waiver and work has stopped on the tank while DOE waits for a decision. The consent decree allows the Sept. 30 deadline to be considered met if three technologies have been used to their limits to empty waste from a tank. The tank has about 13,000 gallons of waste remaining after about 91,000 gallons of waste were removed. The goal is to get down to about 2,700 gallons, which is about 1 inch of waste if it were spread evenly across the bottom of the 530,000-gallon capacity tank.
DOE Warned Last Year Some Tanks May Not Meet Deadline
DOE notified the state in June 2013, that two of the other tanks, Tanks C-102 and C-105, were at serious risk of not being emptied by the deadline, and that remains unchanged. Tank C-105 is being emptied with a Mobile Arm Retrieval System, or MARS, which is the largest and most robust system used to retrieve waste in Hanford’s underground tanks. But this is the first time MARS has been used with vacuum attachments. Tank C-105 may have leaked waste in the past, so more commonly used sluicing systems that would add liquid to the tank are not appropriate. Work with the MARS vacuum system is ongoing, but DOE officials have said that retrieval has been very slow, despite good performance when testing the system. Tank C-102 has had 209,000 of 316,000 gallons of solid waste emptied from it. However, pumping has temporarily stopped to add a new sluicing system. Progress has been made at the C Tank Farm this year, with two C Farm tanks added to the list of those declared retrieved to regulatory requirements.
