A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel will hold a day-long data gathering session Thursday in Richland, Wash., on alternatives to vitrifying all low-activity radioactive waste at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
The nearly-complete Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) being built by Bechtel National lacks capacity to convert all 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste at the former plutonium production complex into glass. In August, the National Academies panel said in August DOE needs to do more vetting before committing to one or more of those options, such as grout or fluidized bed steam reforming technology.
During the Thursday meeting the panel will brief the public on its analysis of research by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) in South Carolina into supplemental methods to treat the low-activity waste held in 177 underground tanks at Hanford. The panel will also take testimony from organizations such as the Tri-City Development Council, the Washington state Department of Ecology, Hanford Communities, the Oregon state Department of Energy, Hanford Challenge, and the Priest Rapids Band of the Wanapum.
This week’s meeting starting at 8:30 a.m. PT at the Courtyard Marriott in Richland marks the final public session in the panel’s nearly two-year study into what to do with supplemental low-activity waste. A final report is due out in January 2020.
The fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act required the National Academies to review the SRNL study.
