March 17, 2014

LAWMAKERS WANT PLAN ON HOW DOE WILL ADDRESS HANFORD TANK WASTE

By ExchangeMonitor

House lawmakers are looking for the Department of Energy to develop a detailed plan on how DOE will address tank waste at Hanford through 2025. Language calling for such a plan has been included in the House version of the Fiscal Year 2014 defense authorization bill, a full version of which was released yesterday ahead of a House Armed Services Committee markup hearing scheduled for June 5. According to the bill, the required plan would need to include:

“a list of all requirements, assumptions and criteria” needed to design, build and operate the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant;
“a schedule of activities, construction, and operations at the Tank Farms and the WTP through 2025 in order to carry out the safe and effective retrieval, treatment, and disposition of nuclear waste in the Tank Farms”;
“actions required to accelerate, to the extent possible, retrieval and treatment of lower-risk, low-activity waste while continuing efforts to accelerate resolution of technical challenges associated with higher-risk, high activity waste”; and
a description of how “adequate protection” will be provided to workers and the public.

The defense policy bill also would authorize funding levels matching DOE’s budget request for most cleanup sites. The main exception is liquid waste cleanup activities at the Savannah River Site, where the bill calls for a higher level of funding than DOE has sought for next year—$647.6 million versus the $552.6 million proposed in the Department’s request. The bill also rejects DOE’s proposal to reauthorize federal and nuclear utility payments into the federal uranium enrichment D&D fund, which is used to help cover cleanup costs at the Oak Ridge, Paducah and Portsmouth sites.

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