Twenty-three years and 70 days after workers began pouring concrete to build the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, the plant has turned radioactive and hazardous chemical waste into a stable glass form for disposal.
“This is really a historic breakthrough,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “After decades of effort, we are officially turning nuclear waste into glass at Hanford. This is a monumental achievement that belongs to quite literally generations of Hanford workers.”
The Department of Energy announced Wednesday that it had met a deadline set in a federal court order to show it could turn the waste into a glass form by Oct. 15. The court ruling was in a lawsuit brought by the state of Washington over previously missed deadlines and environmental cleanup work officials said was taking too long.
The glass produced by Oct. 15 met quality standards to allow it to be buried in a lined landfill in the center of the Hanford nuclear site without contaminating groundwater for hundreds of years, as required by the federal consent decree order.
It’s the start of work to glassify, or vitrify, a good share of the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste held in underground tanks, many of them prone to leaking.
“For the first time ever, a campaign is now underway to significantly reduce the total amount of waste in Hanford’s tanks — a historic achievement decades in the making,” said David Reeploeg, Tri-City Development Council vice president for federal programs.
80-year-old radioactive waste
The Hanford nuclear site adjacent to Richland was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
Uranium fuel irradiated in Hanford reactors along the Columbia River was sent to huge processing plants, where plutonium was chemically extracted from the fuel.
The resulting stew of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste after plutonium was removed has been stored in 177 underground tanks awaiting treatment that would allow its disposal. The oldest waste had been stored for eight decades.
The only tank waste disposed of to date is 2,003 gallons that was grouted in a pilot test and disposed of in Texas and Utah. Grout is not considered protective enough for the geologic and groundwater conditions at the Hanford site, which the Columbia River flows through.
Bechtel holds the contract to design, build and commission the vitrification plant for DOE under a contract that was awarded at the end of 2000.
When ground was broken for the vitrification plant in 2001, the plan was to begin producing glassified waste in 2007 and have the plant fully operational by 2011.
Initially, only the least radioactive waste held in underground tanks is being turned into a stable, but still radioactive, glass form.
Under the federal court order, DOE must begin treating high-level waste by 2033.
Only about 10% of the tank waste is expected to be high-level waste, which once vitrified must be disposed of in a national repository, such as what was once planned at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
Vitrification process
Originally the largest building at the vitrification plant was planned to be a 119-foot-tall Pretreatment Plant that would separate waste into high-level and low-activity radioactive waste streams for separate treatment and disposal.
But since its construction began two decades ago, a less costly way to separate out low-activity waste from high-level waste has been developed. It uses a modular system that is placed near waste storage tanks.
The Tank Side Cesium Removal System filters out highly radioactive particles from mostly liquid waste and uses an ion exchange system to remove cesium, a high-level radioactive waste, that is dissolved in the liquid.
The pretreated waste is piped to the nearby vitrification plant in central Hanford, to be turned into glass in 300-ton melters at the Low Activity Waste Facility. Initially, just one of the facility’s two melters is being used.
In the melter, the radioactive waste is mixed with silica and other glassmaking ingredients and heated to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of the different operations used to chemically remove plutonium from irradiated fuel, each batch of waste requires a different “recipe” of glassmaking materials.
The molten mixture is then poured into stainless steel containers to cool and solidify. The filled canisters will be disposed of at the Integrated Disposal Facility, a lined landfill in the center of Hanford, built specifically for vitrified low-activity waste.
DOE contractor Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure, or H2C, will continue emptying waste from leak prone single shell tanks into 27 newer and sturdier double shell tanks for storage until it can be treated. Starting waste vitrification will free up space in double shell tanks, which are near capacity.
WA leaders fight for vitrification start
A month ago, rumors spread that the Trump administration did not plan to meet the Oct. 15 deadline.
Murray said after a phone conversation with Energy Secretary Chris Wright that he admitted to actively stalling startup of waste treatment at the vitrification plant, which she called “an astonishingly senseless and destructive move and a threat to the entire nuclear cleanup mission at Hanford,” Murray said.
She said he called it an issue of safety, which she disputed.
Gov. Ferguson said if the deadline was not met he would file a legal challenge that the federal government would be sure to lose.
Wright said later the same day that “although there are challenges, we are committed to beginning operations by October 15, 2025.”
“President Trump and Secretary Wright need to understand that they cannot cut corners when it comes to cleaning up the largest nuclear waste site in the country — not now, not ever,” Murray said as the vit plant started glassifying waste.
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