The Department of Energy’s tank waste contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state is installing gear for the planned Test Bed Initiative where about 2,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste will be shipped out of state for disposal in a concrete-like grout form.
DOE contractor Washington River Protection Solutions is installing in-tank pretreatment equipment, shipping containers and a control room in anticipation of the demonstration next year, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said in an Aug. 8 press release. Workers will be testing the equipment until September and the shipments should be made in 2025.
A link to the press release includes a two-minute video on workers installing the in-tank pretreatment system at double-shell Tank SY-101 in the 200 West Area at Hanford. A recent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report said s a retrieval pump and ion-exchange column will remove cesium and a filter will remove solids from the waste stream inside the tank.
The project will involve sending up to 2,000 gallons of waste to either Waste Control Specialists in Texas or EnergySolutions in Utah, which are commercial disposal sites often used by DOE. The Washington state Department of Ecology recently issued a Dangerous Waste Research, Development and Demonstration Permit.
The Test Bed Initiative is also monitored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The much-discussed project builds upon an earlier three-gallon tes in 2017.
Using research from the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina and the National Academies, DOE has been looking for alternative ways to treat some of the low-level radioactive waste that cannot be accommodated at Bechtel National’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. Low-level waste accounts for most of the volume in the 56 million gallons of underground tank waste at Hanford. The waste is a byproduct of decades of plutonium production at Hanford.
