Oregon state officials are “cautiously” behind the U.S. Department of Energy’s effort to “prove out” technology to grout up to 2,000 gallons of low-activity tank waste at the Hanford Site in neighboring Washington and dispose of it outside of the Pacific Northwest.
“Oregon has not previously issued public statements regarding the Test Bed Initiative,” Maxwell Woods, the Oregon Department of Energy’s assistant director for nuclear safety and emergency preparedness, said in comments filed Sept. 3 in connection with an environmental assessment being done under the National Environmental Policy Act.
But Oregon has been “heavily involved in the ongoing National Academy of Sciences study looking at Supplemental Low Activity Waste treatment options, of which offsite disposal similar to the Test Bed Initiative is one potentially promising alternative,” Woods said. Disposing of low-activity tank waste “away from the Columbia River, is an idea to which few in the Pacific Northwest would object,” Woods wrote.
Like Seattle-based advocacy group Hanford Challenge, the Oregon agency considers the 14-day comment period under the environmental assessment too short. While DOE plans a 90-day public comment period as part of the test bed Waste Incidental to Reprocessing (WIR) evaluation, the processes under the National Environmental Policy Act “are likely to be more familiar and accessible to the general public than the WIR,” Woods said.
Low-activity waste accounts for about 90% by volume of about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste left over from decades of plutonium production at Hanford. Research from the Savannah River National Laboratory and National Academy suggest the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel at Hanford might have the capacity to handle just 60% of the low-activity material, and that grouting might provide a relatively affordable option to another vitrification plant.
Hanford officials expect the Waste Treatment Plant will start converting low-activity waste into a glass by the end of 2023.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management did a test run back in 2017 with three gallons of the liquid waste being treated at Hanford’s 222-S Lab and grouted at the local Perma-Fix Environmental Services Northwest plant before being sent to the Waste Control Specialists in Texas for final disposal. The DOE is looking at options for final disposal that include both Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas and EnergySolutions in Clive, Utah. Woods said the federal agency should also evaluate the environmental impacts at those potential disposal sites.
Given prior tank leaks at Hanford, such as at Tank B-109 this year, the DOE and the Washington state Department of Ecology could realize significant environmental benefits from the grout option, should the 2,000-gallon demonstration prove successful, an advocacy group, Heart of America Northwest, said in Sept. 2 comments.
If the demonstration project works, the technology could significantly reduce the total amount of glassified and secondary waste from Hanford tanks needing to be disposed onsite, the Heart of America Northwest said. The onsite landfill “cannot accommodate all the wastes from Hanford’s tank farms and processing facilities without contaminating Hanford’s groundwater,” the group said in its comments.
