Department of Energy and Washington state Department of Ecology managers reassured the Hanford Advisory Board Wednesday their agencies remain interested in the Test Bed Initiative to grout 2,000 gallons of low-activity tank waste that would be shipped out of state.
Brian Vance, the DOE’s manager for the Hanford Site, expects the Nuclear Regulation Commission to deliver a technical evaluation of the 2,000-gallon Test Bed Initiative (TBI) proposal this summer.
“I would certainly like to execute the Test Bed Initiative as early as we feasibly can,” Vance said. Funds are now available for both installation and removal of the needed equipment, Vance said.
“We have TBI as a priority once an application is sent our way,” said David Bowen, nuclear waste manager for the Ecology Department. “If we have to pull resources from another program, we will in order to process that application,” he added.
Back in 2017, Perma-Fix Environmental Services Northwest ran a three-gallon test of waste from Hanford’s 222-S Lab and subsequently shipped the treated material to Waste Control Specialists in Texas for disposal. The 2,000-gallon test would be a scaled up follow-up to that exercise.
The $7 million of funding included in the fiscal 2022 budget for the Test Bed Initiative covers various costs associated with Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit conditions, “when we get to that point,” a DOE spokesperson said in a Wednesday email.
The agency managers’ comments about TBI were in response to an inquiry from advisory board member Gerry Pollet. Pollet, who serves in the Washington House of Representatives, said the grout test seemed “stymied” at Hanford. The 2,000 gallons “is not a heck of a lot … Is this going to happen in the coming fiscal year, we hear the money is there.” It is important to see if this demonstration works, Pollet said.
Vance said DOE expects to update the advisory board in the fall on the updated schedule for the test bed.
On another topic, Vance told the advisory board “we are now operating in the first stage of the new normal,” almost two years to the day after DOE shifted to minimal operations and told most of Hanford’s 10,000 employees to work from home. The DOE recently exited maximum telework and is seeking to return most employees back to their pre-pandemic worksites.
On yet another topic, Bowen said holistic negotiations between the state, DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency on Hanford cleanup are continuing, and moving toward in-person talks once again.
“I know everybody is anxious for these holistic negotiations to be done and no one is more anxious than I am,” Bowen said. The state official offered no further details on the talks.
