The Washington state Department of Ecology is trying to force the U.S. Department of Energy to put a plan in place by fall 2023 for tranfserring radioactive and chemical waste from 149 single-shell tanks to double-shell tanks at the Hanford Site.
In a document dated June 27, the state agency indicated it will not extend deadlines set under the Tri-Party Agreement. The 1989 agreement, between the state, DOE, and the Environmental Protection Agency, defines and prioritizes cleanup plans for Hanford.
The June 27 Tri-Party “consent order change control form” basically puts in place milestones on tank waste the state and DOE have discussed since 2015, but have never formally executed, John Price, the state agency’s Tri-Party Agreement section manager, said by telephone on Wednesday.
Ecology officials want a phased plan, submitted in three stages between 2021 and 2023, for designing and installing new double-shell tanks at Hanford. Those would augment the site’s current set of 27 double-shell tanks to receive the material from the single-shell vessels.
The Energy Department has previously said building six new double-shell tanks could take up to seven years. The state officials did not immediately have existing deadlines at hand.
The Energy Department has 14 days to formally accept or reject the schedule for submitting the new tank design plans. The agency declined comment on Tuesday.
“We are not willing to just keep extending the deadlines,” Ecology spokesman Randy Bradbury said by telephone Tuesday.
About 56 million gallons of waste, left over from plutonium production at Hanford, are stored in 177 underground tanks. The consensus plan under the Tri-Party Agreement is to move waste from 149 old single-shell tanks into 27 double-shell tanks now in service, according to the document signed by Alex Smith, the Ecology Department’s nuclear waste program manager. The state believes this is urgent because dozens of the single-shell tanks leak, Price said.
One of the original double-shell tanks was taken out of service due to a leak between its two shells. The remaining double-shell tanks are almost full, once space reserved for emergencies is taken into account, the state says.
An Energy Department report in February on rising life-cycle costs at Hanford acknowledged plans to empty the 149 single-shell tanks could fall behind schedule.
The Ecology Department is calling for the DOE to submit a report by September 2021 with 30% of the design completed for new tanks. At least some new tanks are needed to provide storage capacity before the waste is fed into the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) being built by Bechtel, which is expected to start converting waste into glass by 2023.
The final DOE design report package will be due to the state by Sept. 30, 2023.
Design, permitting, construction, and installation of tanks compliant with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is a multiyear process and should start promptly, the state said.
The Energy Department has previously resisted building new tanks, which it considers investing in a stopgap measure to a challenge that would be primarily solved by the $17 billion Waste Treatment Plant.
The Energy Department could challenge the state-imposed deadlines by going to federal court or appealing to the Washington state Pollution Control Hearings Board, the Tri-City Herald reported Monday.
Washington state doubts the DOE Office of Environmental Management can meet the 2040 deadline set under the Tri-Party Agreement for retrieving all waste from single-shell tanks, and then treat all the waste by 2047 under the pact, Ecology Department Director Maia Bellon said in May.
Bellon wrote Anne Marie White, then assistant secretary for environmental management at DOE, in May. The state official said she wanted a “frank discussion” with the federal agency about tank wastes.
The Ecology Department still wants to have those discussions, Bradbury said Tuesday. The Energy Department plans to respond directly to Bellon.
