Hanford wraps up preparation of future landfill for canisters of solidified waste

A Department of Energy environmental contractor has finished preparing the Integrated Disposal Facility at the Hanford Site in Washington to store canisters of solidified low-level radioactive waste beginning in 2025, DOE said Tuesday.

The Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF) was built in 2006 at the center of the Hanford complex. Now, the Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co. has the facility ready to receive treated waste from Hanford’s Direct-Feed-Low-Activity Waste Facilities, expected to begin solidifying the site’s tank waste in 2025 at the Bechtel-built Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, DOE said in a press release.

The IDF can hold about 1.2 million cubic yards of waste in its two expandable disposal cells, which in total are 1,345 feet wide, 2,151 feet long and 42 feet deep, DOE said.

“Wrapping up construction at IDF is another important step toward beginning to treat tank waste, a top Hanford Site priority,” Gary Pyles, project engineer for the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s Richland Operations Office said in the release.

The landfill has a 400,000-gallon storage tank and related gear to collect water from rain and snowmelt to help protect groundwater from contamination, according to the DOE release. The IDF could receive about 200,000 containers of the low-level waste over its operating life.

While the parties agreed the issue will not delay a modified state permit for the IDF, DOE has balked at the Washington state Department of Ecology attempt to require installation of decontamination showers at the landfill. DOE said federal law gives it, not the state, health and safety authority at the site.

The IDF will not hold containers of solidified high-level tank waste, which the Waste Treatment Plant is expected to start vitrifying in the 2030s, a DOE spokesperson said. The high-level containers will ultimately go to a deep geologic repository in a consenting community yet to be selected by DOE, which would replace the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada.