The Energy Department has received two more years to come up with a plan for sending transuranic waste stored at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., to New Mexico for permanent disposal, but the waste must still be shipped out by 2030, according to a recently formalized modification to the site’s master cleanup agreement.
DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington Department of Ecology agreed to this long-expected changes to Milestone M-091 of the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) in January, but the change order making the modification final was signed Friday. The TPA governs DOE-led cleanup of the 56 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste, and other waste, at the site, which produced plutonium for the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal during World War II and the Cold War.
At a high level, the modified Milestone-091 still requires DOE to get transuranic waste — equipment and materials contaminated by elements heavier than uranium — and mixed low-level waste including nuclear material and hazardous chemicals to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. by 2030, the year a state permit requires that DOE start sealing up the underground repository.
However, DOE’s deadline for submitting a plan to certify that waste is ready to go to WIPP has now moved out to 2020 from 2018, according to a copy of the modification posted online. The modification, DOE and the other agencies have long said, is focused on accelerating transfer to WIPP of waste that has been stored above ground at Hanford since 2009.
Other transuranic and mixed waste at the site remains recoverable, but buried in the same pits where it was laid during the site’s plutonium-producing days. Under the modified milestone, the buried waste must be dug up by 2028. That gives DOE two years to figure out how to get the as-yet-uncovered waste to WIPP before the agency has to start shutting that facility down. Contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation is cleaning up parts of Hanford where some of this waste is buried, but the company’s contract runs only through 2018.
