Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm touted big liquid-waste-cleanup milestones in Idaho and Washington state in testimony Wednesday at the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Though the fiscal year 2024 budget request for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is about flat overall, tweaks to the 2024 proposal support a big “a ramp up in EM’s ability to tackle tank waste,” Granholm said in her prepared remarks for the committee, which authorizes most of EM’s cleanup budget every year in the National Defense Authorization Act.
“As the largest environmental cleanup program in the world, EM plays a key role in the Department’s overarching mission to protect the planet,” Granholm said.
At the Idaho National Laboratory, President Joe Biden’s $8.3 billion fiscal 2024 budget request includes money to support operations of the recently-commissioned Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU).
The unit, which started up recently, will ultimately treat about 900,000 gallons of liquid waste. The long-delayed IWTU, began cleanup work this month, turns sodium-bearing waste into a granular solid.
For the much larger liquid-waste cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the nearly $3 billion 2024 request includes “a $600 million investment to ramp up work on the Waste Treatment Plant’s High Level Waste facility,” Granholm said in her written testimony.
The DOE EM recently said that solidification of Hanford tank waste at the Direct-Feed-Low-Activity-Waste Facilities should commence by fiscal 2025 instead of the end of 2023.
But during the hearing itself, Granholm received virtually no questions on the DOE’s nuclear cleanup branch. Most hearings concerned the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and other DOE areas, including the war in Ukraine.
At the outset of the hearing, Committee Chair Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said he was interested in hearing about the nearly 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste held in 177 underground tanks at Hanford, “some of which are leaking.” It did not spark much actual discussion during the hearing.
Granholm, like all federal agency heads, is making the rounds before congressional committees writing next year’s budget bills. In March, she testified before the House Appropriations Committee.
