Key questions remain about the practicality of either immobilizing waste with grout or building of a second glass-making plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, a National Academies of Science panel said Tuesday.
This includes examination of the timeline for building another vitrification plant at Hanford or, if DOE decides to pursue grout, what might happen if the two most likely disposal sites, Waste Control Specialists in Texas and EnergySolutions in Utah, should refuse to take it, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Academies panel.
A research team from DOE’s Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina has done a solid technical review of treatment options for low-level waste that cannot be solidified at Hanford’s under-construction Waste Treatment Plant, according to the National Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.
The Savannah River-based research team is charged by the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act with evaluating grout and other options for perhaps half of the low-level radioactive tank waste at Hanford that cannot be solidified into a glass form at the plant due to capacity limits. The same legislation instructs the National Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board to assist the Savannah River lab researchers in refining the report.
Eventually the research is supposed to yield a side-by-side comparison about supplemental waste options for Hanford.
The choices include vitrification with disposal at Hanford’s Integrated Disposal Facility; use of fluidized bed/steam reforming technology akin to the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory; off-site grouting and disposal; or a phased approach starting with off-site grouting and eventually starting on-site grouting.
The Savannah River National Laboratory weighs the options in light of public acceptance, regulatory requirements, lifecycle costs, odds of successful completion, schedule and risk and long-term environmental and safety considerations, according to the National Academies board.
The radiation panel published an earlier review in January followed by public meetings during April in Richland, Wash. The next public meeting in Richland was scheduled for January 2023. The joint Savannah River-National Academies final briefings to DOE, the public and congress were expected in the April- May 2023 timeline, according to this week’s report.
“We appreciate the work of the National Academy of Sciences Committee and the Federally Funded Research and Development Center team as they conduct an independent review of approaches for supplemental low-activity waste treatment at Hanford and develop a framework to inform decisions,” a spokesperson for the DOE Office of Environmental Management said by email Wednesday. “We look forward to continued dialogue with regulators, stakeholders, tribal nations, and members of the public who are interested in this important topic.”
