U.S. Energy Secretary responds to Hanford nuclear cleanup rumors

The Department of Energy has made no changes to its longstanding commitment to the environmental cleanup to the Hanford nuclear site, said Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a statement posted online Tuesday.

The statement, which he said was “contrary to news reports,” followed rumors that DOE wanted to change course in treating the least radioactive waste at the massive vitrification plant that has been under construction for 23 years.

But while Wright said that no changes have been made, he also did not say that they would not be.

“DOE is continuing to examine testing and operations of the DFLAW site to ensure waste disposal options are safe, cost-effective and environmentally sound,” he said.

DFLAW stands for Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste, which is DOE’s current approach to separating out the least radioactive waste — low activity radioactive waste — from the 56 million gallons of waste in underground tanks.

The plan is to turn it into a stable, but still radioactive, glass form at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, commonly referred to as the vitrification plant.

“Across the entire department, we are actively working to improve the safety and efficacy of the important work we do each and every day,” he said.

On Monday, E&E by Politico published an article saying that Roger Jarrell, the principal deputy assistant secretary of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, had abruptly left DOE on Monday.

The publication quoted an unnamed source saying that the energy secretary wanted to go in a “different direction” on treating Hanford’s radioactive tank waste.

The same source told the publication that “I think they want to kill WTP (the Waste Treatment Plant) altogether, even though it’s (close to being operational.)”

The plant is one of the top employers in the Tri-Cities, with an annual payroll of about $350 million and nearly 3,000 employees. Multi-billion Eastern WA plant

The vitrification plant has been under construction since 2002 and is expected to finally start turning some radioactive waste into glass for permanent disposal by a federal court consent decree deadline of Oct. 15. It was recently extended from Aug. 1.

Bechtel National holds a DOE contract to design and build the vit plant with the latest estimate of its value $18 billion, which had required it to demonstrate it could treat low-activity radioactive waste by 2022.

Bechtel will turn operation of the plant over to a different DOE contractor, Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure, or H2C.

Work still needs to be done to finish constructing the facility needed to treat high level waste and DOE has a consent decree for the initial high level waste treatment at the plant to start by 2033.

DOE’s current plan for tank waste treatment was hashed out over four years of negotiations with the Washington state Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator. The agreement was finalized at the start of this year.

It calls for continuing the plan to start treating low activity radioactive waste this year and to also grout the low activity radioactive waste from 22 tanks by 2040.

The dual approach of vitrification and grouting would speed treatment of waste and its removal from leak-prone underground tanks, some of which have stored waste since World War II.

The tanks sit above ground water that moves toward the Columbia River which runs through the 580-square-mile Hanford site.

The Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington adjacent to Richland has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste mixed with other hazardous waste stored in underground tanks.

The waste was left from chemically processing irradiated uranium to remove plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from WWII through the Cold War. Different processing methods have left a stew of different types of chemicals in the waste in the tanks.

DOE this summer completed a successful test to solidify 2,000 gallons of low activity radioactive waste from one of Hanford’s tanks in concrete-like grout for disposal. The waste was grouted at commercial operations in Utah and Texas and disposed there.

The state Department of Ecology has found Hanford’s geology with groundwater moving slowly toward the Columbia River unsuitable for disposing of grouted waste at the Washington site.

Vitrified low activity radioactive waste is allowed to be disposed of at a lined landfill at Hanford because the glass would better protect the waste from groundwater than the more porous grout would. Grouting option for waste

A Government Accountability Office report in 2017, relying on information from a commercial grouting vendor, concluded that grouting the least radioactive waste would be less expensive than vitrifying it. That would not be an option for the estimated 10% of the tank waste that is high level radioactive waste.

On Monday, the E&E by Politico article left Washington state leaders scrambling to determine if DOE’s plans for the vitrification plant had changed.

DOE did not respond to Tri-City Herald requests for clarification, and late in the day four Washington officials put out statements saying if rumors were true, they were concerned.

They included U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats; Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash.; and Washington’s Democrat Gov. Bob Ferguson.

Murray called the rumored change in plans for tank waste treatment “a catastrophic threat to the Hanford cleanup mission and the Tri-Cities community and (it) would light billions of taxpayer dollars on fire.”

Cantwell said that any plans to deviate from starting to vitrify tank waste in six weeks would delay cleanup of tank waste and agreed that it would waste billions of taxpayer dollars.

Ferguson said that changing course now would violate legal agreements and extend envrionmental cleanup work for decades.

Newhouse said he asked the Trump administration for more information Monday and that he will continue to work to ensure that environmental cleanup of Hanford has ample resources and support.