Months after a deal was announced, the Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology are still not ready to share details from recently-completed closed-door talks on future cleanup of the Hanford Site, though the feds are preparing to publish a new five-year plan for the former plutonium production property.
Back in May, DOE, the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced they have reached conceptual agreement in their “holistic negotiations,” likely to result in changes to both their Tri-Party Agreement and a federal consent decree.
Last week, spokespeople for both DOE and the state said the agencies were not ready to publicly roll out an official document laying out results of nearly three years of talks conducted with federal mediators.
But on Tuesday, DOE said in a press release that an updated, short-term cleanup forecast covering fiscal years 2024 to 2028 could be out around Oct. 10.
Meanwhile, the three agencies in the Tri-Party Agreement governing Hanford cleanup, plus the U.S. Department of Justice, are drafting changes to the legal documents governing long term cleanup at the 580-square mile site in southeastern Washington, a state Ecology spokesperson told Exchange Monitor last week via email.
“I don’t have any set timetable I can share with you on when that might be done and when a public announcement and associated public involvement will begin, but we hope to get there soon,” the Ecology spokesperson said.
DOE also said Tuesday that a 30-day public comment period for the five-year Hanford plan should start in early October, with a public meeting planned in late October. DOE updates the plan annually to reflect current progress under the Tri-Party Agreement, according to an “advance notice of upcoming public outreach.”
The current five-year plan for fiscal 2023 through 2027 calls for DOE to complete hot commissioning of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant’s Direct-feed Low-Activity Waste Facilities during fiscal 2024, which starts Oct. 1. Publicly citing delays during the COVID-19 pandemic, DOE now expects low-level waste cleanup to begin in 2025. DOE hopes the plant will process up to 21 metric tons of glass per day by the end of fiscal 2027.
