Board says to empty tanks more quickly

Annette Cary;Herald staff writer /Cary Annette/893 words/9 November 2009/Tri-City Herald/TRIC/B1
\English\c) 2009 The Tri-City Herald. All Rights Reserved.

More aggressive deadlines for emptying radioactive waste from leakprone underground tanks should be included in a proposed settlement agreement, the Hanford Advisory Board says.
That was one of several recommendations the board made last week concerning a proposed agreement between the Department of Energy and the state of Washington that would end a lawsuit brought by the state.
The board continues its opposition to further consideration of bulk vitrification for supplemental treatment of low activity radioactive waste. It also continues to press for the start of treatment of low activity waste at the main vitrification plant under construction, the Waste Treatment Plant, before the entire plant is ready to operate.
In addition the board earlier had advised that a cost and schedule outlook for remaining environmental cleanup work be completed before the state agreed to changes in legal deadlines. But when members were asked if that was a deal breaker for them, they said no.
“By the grace of God we got the consent decree,” said board member Pam Brown Larsen, the director of the Hanford Communities. “Let’s get on with that.”
The consent decree, part of the proposed settlement agreement, would make some cleanup deadlines enforceable by a federal judge without the state having to depend on issuing fines or filing a new court case. Longer-term deadlines would be included in the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement.
The state filed a lawsuit after DOE fell years behind schedule to empty underground tanks of radioactive waste and treat the waste for permanent disposal. Among the many new deadlines in the proposed settlement are extending the deadline for emptying all 149 leakprone older tanks from 2018 to 2040 and extending the deadline for start of operations of the vitrification plant to treat the waste from 2011 to 2019.
The state and DOE agreed that those deadlines are realistic for the technically challenging work. And DOE has agreed to stop shipments of several types of radioactive waste to Hanford at least until the vit plant is fully operational, speed up cleanup of ground water and prepare a “lifestyle cost and schedule report” that would cover remaining cleanup work.
The proposed agreement would require one or two of Hanford’s underground tanks to be emptied each year until 2022, which is shortly after the vit plant is scheduled to be in full operations. That is “unacceptably slow,” the board said in the advice it sent Friday to DOE and state officials.
The proposed agreement would require negotiations to be re-opened every six years to consider whether technical or other advances would allow deadlines to be pushed up. Instead, the board wants new schedules negotiated every three years.
The board never has been a fan of bulk vitrification and asked that language relating to the technology be removed from the document covering the proposed new deadlines.
The Waste Treatment Plant was not planned to be large enough to treat all the low activity waste in Hanford’s underground tanks. DOE has been considering options for the remainder of the waste, including expanding the main plant or using bulk vitrification, which would glassify large amounts of waste in boxes the size of land-sea shipping containers.
“I’m not keen about throwing out a possible technology at this point,” said Steve Pfaff, DOE project director for tank waste retrieval, during the board discussion.
But board members argued that the costs of developing the technology already is two or more times greater than planned and that technical issues, including capturing some radionuclides, have yet to be solved.
Other technical issues have been solved in ways that would increase the cost of treating waste with bulk vitrification, board members said. For instance, Hanford sand could not be used as planned to mix with the waste because it has too much iron content.
“There comes a point where you have to say this will not work and move on,” said board member Dirk Dunning, who represents the Oregon Department of Energy.
The board also recommended that the proposed settlement agreement include a new deadline that would require the facility at the Waste Treatment Plant — which would turn low-activity waste into glassified logs for disposal — be started earlier than other portions of the vitrification plant. That would allow more of the site’s leak-prone single-shell tanks to be emptied sooner, the board said.
The tanks are being emptied into newer double-shell tanks, but they are nearing capacity as work continues to build the vitrification plant and start treating the waste to make more space in the sturdier tanks.
Although DOE has looked at an early start, it’s more complicated than it sounds, Pfaff said.
The Waste Treatment Plant “is designed as an integrated facility,” Pfaff said. If low activity waste is treated before the plant’s Pretreatment Facility is operating, significant design changes would be needed, he said.
“It could potentially delay completion of the other facilities because of the costs involved,” he said.
Public hearings on the proposed agreement conclude this week with a hearing today in Spokane and Thursday in Seattle. More information on the agreement is posted at www.hanford.gov.

w Annette Cary: 582-1533; acary @tricityherald.com; more Hanford news at hanford news.com.