The Department of Energy and its prime contractor for radioactive liquid waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state are in the market for technology to better identify and evaluate leaks from single-shell underground tanks, according to a notice Wednesday on a federal procurement website.
DOE and Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions are seeking expressions of interest by June 14 by businesses with such technology, according to the notice in the System for Award Management procurement website.
Hanford has 149 single-shell tanks that store high-level radioactive waste derived from decades of plutonium production for nuclear bombs. A recent agreement between DOE and the Washington state Department of Ecology requires DOE to shop around for potential in-tank and external tank leak detection technology and methods, according to the notice.
“This includes currently available technologies and technologies under development,” according to the notice.
The single-shell tanks are “well past their design lifetime, and many are known to have leaked in the past,” DOE said in the notice. DOE hopes to start converting low-activity waste into a glass form at Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant in fiscal 2025 but that will mark the start of a long process for cleaning up tank waste.
As a result, “tanks will continue to store waste for the near future,” DOE said. “Reliable means for leak detection and monitoring are an essential component of future storage and retrieval operations,” DOE said in the notice.
“Any technology, or system of technologies, with a reasonable chance of detecting a leak using measurements inside or outside of individual tanks will be evaluated for implementation,” DOE said in the notice. Incremental advances to existing technologies used at Hanford will also be considered, DOE said.
