By Annette Cary
Tri-City Herald
The Department of Energy has again been granted more time to start treatment of radioactive waste at the Hanford site’s $17 billion vitrification plant.
DOE was required to start limited operation of the plant by the end of 2023 to treat some of the least radioactive of 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks at the nuclear reservation.
But U.S. Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson in December agreed to extend the 2023 consent decree deadline that she set nearly five years ago.
The same ruling also gives DOE more time on two other vitrification plant deadlines and two deadlines to empty radioactive waste from certain underground tanks that are prone to leaking.
The state of Washington, which filed the federal lawsuit that led to the consent decree deadlines, and DOE jointly requested the deadline extensions because the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed work at the site. The consent decree left open the possibility that there would be extraordinary events beyond DOE’s control that would justify new deadlines, and the pandemic qualifies, the state and DOE said in court documents.
DOE restricted the number of workers on site to about 10% of the total workforce because of the pandemic on March 23 and has since been bringing workers back in phases.
New vit plant deadlines
DOE will get an extra day to start operating the vitrification plant and for four other consent decree deadlines for each day between March 23 and when it began to bring a significant number on workers back on site in late August.
The first phase of bringing workers back on site began in May, and the second phase of remobilizing the workforce began at the end of August. That extends deadlines by a little more than five months.
In addition, DOE will get an extra three-quarters of a day in the current stage of remobilization until the third phase starts. The extra time amounts to about three months of extra time so far, for a total of about eight months of extra time and counting.
The extension also applies to a deadline on the last day of 2020 to have the construction of the vitrification plant’s Low Activity Waste Facility substantially complete.
DOE appears to be very close to meeting that deadline after DOE and its contractor Bechtel National announced in mid-December that it had completed construction on the last of the 94 systems in the plant.
The other vitrification plant deadline that has been extended is to start commissioning of the Low Activity Waste Facility without running any radioactive waste through the plant at the end of 2022.
The new deadlines do not directly affect the 2033 deadline to start treatment of high-level radioactive waste at the plant of the 2036 deadline to have the vitrification plant fully operational.
DOE shifted its focus to starting treatment of just low activity radioactive waste at the plant after technical issues were raised about parts of the plant that will handle the approximately 10% of tank waste this is high-level radioactive waste. The waste is left after the Hanford site in Eastern Washington produced about two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium for its nuclear weapons program during World War II and the Cold War.
The vitrification plant will turn much of the tank waste into a stable glass form for permanent disposal.
New tank deadlines
The judge also is extending a deadline to have nine single-shell tanks in Hanford’s A and AX farms emptied by radioactive waste before October 2026, plus a deadline to have that work partially completed before July of this year.
The extensions are for the same amount of time as the new deadline extensions at the vitrification plant.
Currently waste is being emptied from 149 single-shell tanks, at least one of them currently leaking waste into the ground, into 27 newer double-shell tanks.
With the double shell tanks nearing capacity, starting treatment of some waste will have the added benefit of freeing up some double shell tank space to store more single shell tank waste until it can be vitrified for disposal.
Construction on the vitrification plant started in 2002, with a goal then to have it operating to treat both low activity and high level waste by 2011.
The state of Washington filed a lawsuit in federal court in 2008 when it became apparent that DOE could not meet the 2011 deadline.
That resulted in a new deadline to have the plant operating in 2019.
As it became apparent that DOE would not meet that deadline, the federal court set new deadlines in March 2016 requiring that low activity waste treatment start by the end of 2023 — one of the deadlines recently extended because of the COVID pandemic — and the deadline that remains unchanged requiring the plant to be fully operating in 2036.
