More than 2,000 people submitted comments and signed petitions urging the Department of Energy to withdraw a proposal to reclassify the remaining radioactive waste in the Hanford Site’s C Tank Farm as low-level waste. The reclassification would be a step toward allowing DOE to fill the 16 tanks in the tank farm with concrete-like grout and then leave the vessels in place.
“The federal government’s proposal sets the stage to leave long-lived, dangerous contamination close to the Columbia River at Hanford. The Trump administration’s proposal makes Hanford a high-level waste dump in all but name,” Dan Serres, conservation director for Columbia Riverkeeper, said in a prepared statement.
Columbia Riverkeeper, Hanford Challenge, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Heart of America Northwest gathered comments and petition signatures in opposition to the DOE Draft Waste Incidental to Reprocessing Evaluation for Closure of Waste Management Area C at the Hanford Site.
The evaluation determined “the small amount of residual waste in the tanks, once stabilized with grout and covered by a surface barrier, would not pose a significant threat,” DOE said in a fact sheet distributed to support a federal public comment period from June 4 to Nov. 7.
From 2013 until late 2017, Hanford crews emptied about 96 percent of the waste from the 16 tanks that make up C Farm. The goal was to remove 99 percent of the waste. About 64,000 gallons of waste remains in the tanks.
The regional Tri-City Development Council supported the evaluation. The likely alternative would be to spend substantial amounts of money, which could be better used elsewhere at Hanford, to “endlessly try to retrieve the tanks to new standards, and/or to dismantle and remove the tanks at substantial risk to workers,” the organization said in its comment on the proposal.
The Energy Department has said it will consider the submitted comments and the results of a technical review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before it publishes a final evaluation and makes a determination, possibly in the spring.
