Feds Vitrify Radioactive Waste at Hanford Site for First Time

After a design and development funding of greater than 20 years and $30 billion, the US. Vitality Dept and its contractor Bechtel Nationwide formally began up—for the primary time on Oct. 15—the newly constructed industrial plant on the big federal Hanford former nuclear weapons manufacturing web site in Washington state to show long-stored radioactive waste into vitrified glass for safer long-term storage. 

The milestone announcement got here on the identical day a long-standing federal-state consent decree had ordered the vitrification course of for thousands and thousands of gallons of blended low-level nuclear and dangerous wastes initially saved in 177 underground tanks since World Warfare II

The primary batch of steady vitrified glass is being produced within the Hanford web site Waste Therapy and Immobilization Plant, known as the Vit Plant, and the Direct-Feed Low-Exercise Waste Facility, the place waste is blended with glass-forming supplies and heated to 2,100° F inside certainly one of two 300-ton melters earlier than being poured into stainless-steel containers for cooling and long-term disposal elsewhere on the 580-sq-mile web site. 

The vitrification plant will run 24 hours a day. A Bechtel spokesperson instructed ENR the present federal authorities shutdown just isn’t impacting operations. 

Bechtel Nationwide designed and constructed the plant, calling it the most important radioactive waste therapy facility on the planet. “This milestone represents the belief of a imaginative and prescient … to resolve one of many nation’s most advanced environmental challenges safely and completely,” stated Dena Volovar, president of Bechtel’s nuclear, safety and environmental enterprise, in an announcement. 

Bechtel plans to proceed feeding waste and glass-forming supplies into the melters, filling metal containers with vitrified waste to be transported to the positioning disposal facility. The agency expects to course of a median of 5,300 gallons of tank waste per day. An Oct. 9 waste switch introduced 25,000 gallons into the vitrification facility. 

The annual federal price range throughout the positioning is roughly $3 billion. 

“This achievement allows us to shift focus to soundly working the plant,” stated Ray Geimer, DOE Hanford web site supervisor, including that the main focus now shifts to soundly working the power whereas advancing work to prepared operation of its direct-feed therapy strategy for high-level waste

“It’s fairly unbelievable to see this first-of-its-kind plant come
on-line,” Casey Sixkiller, director of the state ecology division, regulatory oversight company for your entire course of for greater than 20 years, stated in an announcement. Up to now, the state Dept of Well being has issued eight radioactive air emissions licenses to make sure plant operations are assembly all well being and security requirements

Within the subsequent 18 months. Bechtel will finally switch plant operation and waste dis[osal to a new contractor, Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C) It is a joint venture of prime contractors BWX Technologies Inc., Amentum and Fluor Corp., with teaming subcontractors dss+, DBD Inc., Longenecker and Associates Inc. and INTERA.

The state said it will continue oversight as the process moves toward full operation, aiming to issue a final permit for the decades it will take to treat all of Hanford’s tank waste. 

“It’s difficult to overstate how important this milestone is in the Hanford cleanup effort,” said Gov. Bob Ferguson in a statement.