No decision has been made on whether grouting of some low-level radioactive tank waste at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site would occur inside the 580-square-mile federal complex, or elsewhere, government attorneys told an advisory board Tuesday.
A pathway to grout for some Hanford waste sparked questions from the Hanford Advisory Board, which was briefed on the settlement agreement arising from the so-called holistic talks on Hanford tank waste.
The deal unveiled last week by DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington Department of Ecology keeps in place timelines for starting to make glass from low-and high-level waste at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. But it also opens the door to grouting low-activity waste that cannot be accommodating at the vitrification plant.
The advisory board received a briefing led by DOE’s chief counsel for Hanford, Mark Silberstein, and Kelly Wood of the Washington state attorney general’s office.
“A decision has not been made yet” on where exactly grouting will be done, Silberstein said. It could occur locally or at one of the possible grout disposal facilities, EnergySolutions in Utah or Waste Control Specialists in West Texas, he added.
The state of Washington has “remained agnostic” on where the grouting occurs, Wood said. The settlement agreement specifies final disposal will be out-of-state.
Silberstein and Wood were peppered with questions and comments about grout, DOE’s decision not to employ a high-level waste definition reinterpretation in the proposed settlement agreement and why the holistic talks took so long.
Pamela Larsen of the advisory board said she and others have misgivings about shipping tank waste in liquid form across the country. Larson favors DOE usings a Richland, Wash., facility, Perma-Fix Northwest, to do the grouting. Then DOE would merely “send grout down the road.”
Other board members raised concerns about the carbon dioxide footprint resulting from shipping tank waste across the country and whether the agreement’s embrace of grout is premature, given state permitting is still underway for the 2,000-gallon demonstration of the test-bed initiative.
A comment period begins May 30 on potential settlement-driven changes to a DOE-state consent decree, which must be blessed by a federal judge, as well as revisions to the Tri-Party Agreement between DOE, EPA and the state.
Advisory board member Robert Thompson said given the length of the settlement talks, the process seems to push too many big decisions down the road such as updating the Tri-Party end date for emptying single-shell tanks, which is currently 2043.
