U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday praised remediation at the Hanford Site in Washington state as he attended a celebration to commemorate the completion of the K-Basin sludge transfer.
“Thanks to the expertise and perseverance of our dedicated men and women on the ground … the removal of sludge away from the Columbia River has been accomplished,” Perry said in his prepared remarks.
Perry also visited the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel, which is expected to start treating low-activity waste by 2023. The visit occurred a couple days before Washington, D.C., -based Politico reported multiple sources as saying the former Texas governor plants to resign from the Energy Department in a few weeks.
After years of preparations, Hanford workers in June 2018 started removing the first tranche of highly radioactive sludge from underwater storage in the K West Reactor basin. The Tri-Party Agreement on Hanford cleanup, between the state, DOE, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, required transfer all the 35 cubic yards of sludge to T Plant by the end of 2019.
At the T Plant the material can be safely stored below ground. Ultimately the sludge, produced when irradiated reactor fuel rods began to deteriorate, will be treated and shipped as transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The milestone reduces the risk of contamination of the nearby Columbia River, a key water source for both Oregon and Washington, Perry noted.
Over the last decade, most of the “hundreds” of nuclear facilities and waste sites in the 220-square-mile area along the river have been successfully cleaned up, Perry said. He was joined at the event by Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.).
The sludge milestone was also cited last month at an Energy Department conference in Alexandria, Va., by Ty Blackford, president and CEO of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation. The Jacobs subsidiary is the Energy Department contractor for cleanup of Hanford’s Central Plateau.
