A virtual public meeting is scheduled April 30 on a proposal to build a facility to analyze, store and process transuranic and mixed low-level wastes at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
DOE’s Hanford Field Office and the Washington state Department of Ecology will hold the briefing at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Information on attending the virtual session is available online.
The facility will be outside of Hanford’s 200 West Area in the center of the site. Transuranic wastes are essentially radioactive odds and ends such as gloveboxes, debris, clothes and instruments that would be packed into drums and eventually shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. Mixed low-level wastes are less radioactive, but also contaminated with fluids. The mixed low-level wastes would eventually be buried in barrels at Hanford.
The facility, the Contact-Handled Waste Processing, Treatment and Storage Area, is not expected to receive the necessary permits before 2029. Actual construction will likely take place in the early 2030s, said state Ecology spokesman Ryan Miller.
Hanford is gearing up to resume its long-dormant shipments to WIPP. Hanford is currently using existing facilities for transuranic and related waste. But the current structures were designed for other purposes and face issues such as space limitations and ventilation concerns. Hanford has roughly 8,240 cubic yards of transuranic and mixed low-level wastes at the former plutonium production site.
