A federal district court judge in Washington state last week formally approved giving the Department of Energy four more months to start cold commissioning of a facility to turn some of the less radioactive waste at the Hanford Site into a solid glass form.
The prior deadline was Thursday Aug. 1 for startup of cold commissioning of the Low-Activity Waste Facility at the Bechtel-built Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. But the July 30 order from U.S. District Court Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson in Eastern Washington gives DOE until Nov. 29.
The order formalizes what DOE characterized as a “modest” delay in a June letter to state officials in Washington and Oregon. Cold commissioning involves making glass from a non-radioactive liquid that would simulate Hanford tank waste.
In the June letter, DOE’s Hanford manager, Brian Vance said the agency is sticking with its current 2025 target to start solidifying radioactive waste into glass at the plant. Washington citizen groups that monitor the former plutonium production complex have said they are not surprised by the delay in cold commissioning.
Judge Peterson approved a joint motion for the milestone extension in the latest version of the amended consent decree on Hanford cleanup between the Washington state Department of Ecology and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
“The Parties have agreed to an extension of one of the Consent Decree’s interim milestones due to ongoing technical challenges that have arisen during the process of installing, testing, and integrating the necessary equipment and facilities to being [sic] treating Hanford’s low-activity waste,” according to the July 30 court order.
“The Court finds good cause for amendment based upon the Parties’ agreement, as well as their showing, that the criteria for amendment of the Consent Decree have been met,” the judge said in the order.
Due largely to time lost in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, In 2022 DOE received a 579-day extension until Aug. 1, 2024. The prior deadline for cold commissioning was Dec. 31, 2022.
There are about 56 million gallons of liquid waste, most of it low-level radioactive waste, held in Hanford’s underground tanks. The liquid waste is left over from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
An agreement published in May between DOE, the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, opens the door for some of the low-level waste at Hanford to be shipped out of state and disposed of in a concrete-like grout form. The agreement was spawned by the so-called holistic talks between the parties. Vitrification of Hanford high-level waste at the on-site Waste Treatment Plant is currently expected to start around 2033.