The Hanford Site in Washington State would receive a haircut under President Joe Biden’s budget request for the Department of Energy in fiscal 2022, but still account for nearly a third of the entire $7.6-billion budget sought for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
Should the spending package for cleanup at the former plutonium production reservation pass Congress unchanged, Hanford’s two operating offices would together receive about $2.47 billion, down from the fiscal 2021 level of $2.57 billion.
The Richland Operations Office, which oversees the mostly solid-waste cleanup at Hanford’s central plateau, would stay relatively flat at about $927 million for fiscal 2022 compared with $926 million in fiscal 2021, according to the budget justification posted this week.
During fiscal 2022, the Richland Office should near completion of modifications to the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility in order to start moving 1,936 cesium and strontium capsules to dry from wet storage. Total project spending decreases to $8 million in fiscal 2022 down from $15 million in fiscal 2021, according to the document.
This includes modifications for the transfer system and welding operations to seal the containers. The capsules are currently stored underwater at the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility and will be moved into dry storage near the current site. The pools have held the capsules since the 1970s and the transfer is supposed to be complete by August 2025, according to the document.
Meanwhile the Office of River Protection, responsible for managing 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste in underground tanks at Hanford, would have its funding decrease to $1.54 billion in the upcoming fiscal year, down from $1.64 billion in fiscal 2021.
The biggest difference would be a $200-million cut in spending for the direct feed low-activity waste facilities at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel to convert radioactive tank waste into glass starting by the end of 2023. The DOE requests $586 million for low-activity waste funding, down from $786 million in fiscal 2021. But spending on high-activity waste facilities at the plant would increase to $60 million from $25 million during the prior budget year.
The DOE now expects final cleanup at Hanford to be completed in the 2070 to 2075 time period.
