A defense policy bill unveiled last week by the Senate Armed Services Committee would require the Department of Energy to report to Congress on its progress in closing radioactive waste storage tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Idaho National Laboratory.
The committee is also looking for a report from the head of the Government Accountability Office on the status of waste storage at the Hanford Site in Washington state, where no tanks have yet been closed.
Armed Services in May completed the markup of its National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2020, but only last week released the bill and its accompanying report. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Wednesday invoked cloture on the bill, setting up floor debate.
The report for the Senate NDAA notes that the three DOE facilities together have stored roughly 90 million gallons of radioactive waste in close to 240 underground tanks. The material is the byproduct of the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
By this year, Savannah River had processed roughly 7 million gallons of waste through the Defense Waste Processing Facility and retired nine of 51 tanks by filing them with a concrete-like grout, the NDAA report says. Similarly, the Idaho National Laboratory has treated roughly 8 million gallons of waste and closed eight of 11 tanks.
None of Hanford’s 177 tanks have been closed. Bechtel is building a plant to vitrify much of the site’s 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste, as DOE considers other approaches for processing some of that material. The Waste Treatment Plant is scheduled by 2023 to begin converting Hanford low-activity waste into a glass form for disposal.
“In January 2019, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that a final decision has not yet been made on how to clean up and close Hanford’s tanks,” the Senate report says. “The GAO noted that closing the tanks in place could cost about $18 billion less than removing the waste and then exhuming and disposing of the tanks elsewhere.”
If the Senate NDAA becomes law, DOE would have until Jan. 1, 2020, to submit to Congress’ defense committee a detailed accounting of tank closure at Idaho and Savannah River, including the state of work and lessons learned; the associated expenses; and how closures have and will continue to meet environmental performance mandates. “The report shall also include the DOE’s plans for future tank closures at the Savannah River Site and Idaho National Laboratory and the status of its plans for closing tanks at the Hanford site.”
The U.S. comptroller general would then have until Jan. 1, 2021, to provide the same committees with the latest on tank closures at Hanford, covering costs, risks, and any other useful information.
