$95M construction project vital to cleanup of Eastern WA radioactive waste ready to start
RICHLAND – The Department of Energy is ready to begin a three-year construction project critical to the environmental cleanup of the Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington.
The huge, lined landfill in the center of the 580-square-mile nuclear reservation is once again nearing capacity after four expansions and more than 19 million tons of waste disposed of in it since it opened in 1995.
Workers are preparing to start construction on an 11th disposal cell, called a “super cell” because it is twice the size of each of the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility’s first eight cells.
The project will cost $95 million and the expansion is scheduled to be completed by the end of September 2028.
“ERDF has been a cornerstone of our waste disposal strategy for nearly 30 years, and expansion of the facility is critical to provide for uninterrupted, efficient and safe disposal in support of our ongoing cleanup mission for years to come,” said Brian Harkins, acting manager for DOE at Hanford.
Money to start construction on the new super cell was freed up by DOE after Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., raised concerns.
Construction was ready to start as soon as this month, but money had not been released for the project, putting subcontractor workers at risk of layoffs.
After Murray asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright during a Congressional hearing this month why the money appropriated by Congress was not available, the money was released the next day.
Radioactive waste disposal
The new ERDF disposal cell is planned to hold 2.8 million cubic yards of waste, which is expected to provide enough capacity to allow certain environmental cleanup projects to continue through 2040.
Subcontractors for the excavation of the new super cell are AIS Infrastructure, Envirotech and Weaver Consultants Group.
The landfill is used to dispose of low-level radioactive and hazardous chemical waste, including the debris from the demolition of more than 800 facilities and from digging up contaminated soil and debris from 1,300 waste sites.
Currently an average of 10,000 tons to 15,000 tons are disposed of in the landfill each month, but at times when the cleanup was focused on work along the Columbia River that much waste was disposed of in a single day.
The Hanford site adjacent to Richland was left contaminated by the production of nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
A separate lined landfill, the Integrated Disposal Facility, has been built elsewhere in central Hanford for glassified low-activity waste retrieved from Hanford’s underground waste storage tanks and then treated at the Hanford vitrification plant for disposal.
Some other waste is planned to be sent offsite for disposal, including grouted low-activity tank waste, glassified high level waste and transuranic waste, which at Hanford is typically debris contaminated with plutonium.
The construction of the new super cell will not affect ongoing waste disposal activities at ERDF.
The 107-acre landfill includes a liner system designed to collect rain, snow melt and the water used to suppress dust to prevent contamination from being carried by water from the landfill through the soil to reach the groundwater far below ERDF.
A secondary liner system provides for early detection of any leak from the primary liner. Both will be used until the landfill is closed.
When the landfill is no longer needed for environmental cleanup, a barrier will be placed over the top and desert plants will grow on it, soaking up the several inches of precipitation that fall in a normal weather year at Hanford.