Washington state wants a “frank discussion” with the Energy Department about tank waste cleanup at the Hanford Site, and could seek relief in court if a mutually acceptable plan can’t be agreed upon.
Washington Department of Ecology is frustrated by DOE Office of River Protection’s frequent failure to meet timelines in both a 2010 federal court consent decree, and the Tri-Party Agreement first signed by DOE, the state, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1989.
Ecology Department Director Maia Bellon outlined her concerns in a May 29 letter to Assistant Secretary of Energy Anne Marie White who is resigning from DOE effective June 14. Energy Department policy is to respond to the state agency directly before making any public comment.
Hanford’s 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste, left from chemically reprocessing irradiated fuel to remove plutonium.
First, the state wants ongoing talks between it and DOE to speed retirements of single-shell tanks at Hanford. Washington state doubts the DOE Office of Environmental Management can meet its Tri-Party 2040 deadline for retrieving all waste from single-shell tanks, and treating all the waste by 2047.
Secondly it wants to ensure the federal agency and contractor Bechtel will meet the revised 2016 consent decree deadlines for operation of the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant (WTP). This includes starting low-activity treatment by the end of 2023 – as well as starting vitrification of high-level waste by 2036. The HLW treatment must occur “as close to current consent decree deadlines as possible.”
The state was caught off guard by DOE’s “unilateral decision” in 2018 to stop construction of the low-activity waste pretreatment system. The federal agency instead shifted its focus to designing a tank side cesium removal (TSCR) facility, Bellon said.
In addition, the state agency has learned DOE is doing only “limited design work” on the high-level waste facility now. The Energy Department’s fiscal 2020 budget request “removes any reference” to the vitrification plant’s pretreatment and high-level waste facilities.
The state Department of Ecology is loathe to accept further changes in either the consent decree or tank-waste related Tri-Party milestones “until we come to agreement on a mutually acceptable holistic path forward that the parties have reduced to writing,” Bellon said.
