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The Department of Energy and its regulators have tentatively agreed to changes in legal deadlines for cleanup of central Hanford and on a general framework to prepare for environmental cleanup work there.
The revised deadlines under the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement won't be adopted until the public has a chance to comment.
Under the proposed deadlines, DOE would face a tight schedule for coming up with a plan to clean up contaminated ground water in central Hanford. But DOE would have more time to come up with a plan to clean up contaminated soil deep underground.
"It became apparent to us we needed more time for the deep vadose zone," said Dennis Faulk, Hanford program manager for the Environmental Protection Agency.
DOE plans an increased focus on developing ways to attack that contamination. The vadose zone includes contamination that can be too deep to just dig up at 250 or 300 feet below the surface of the ground.
A substantial amount of Hanford's focus in recent years has been on cleaning up nuclear reservation land along the Columbia River to shrink the contaminated portion of the site to 75 square miles at its center by 2015.
In February 2009, new Tri-Party Agreement deadlines were proposed that would accelerate the cleanup of ground water plumes near the Columbia River. But regulators agreed then to ease deadlines for other work.
Because of technical problems and an interest in spending cleanup money on work along the Columbia River, DOE was given more time for work in central Hanford.
At that time, DOE and its regulators also agreed to start discussions to develop a strategy to clean up central Hanford, modeling it after the strategy used for land along the river.
"We want to be ready to clean up the Central Plateau at the pace we did the river corridor cleanup" as that work is completed, said Matt McCormick, DOE assistant manager for central Hanford.
Those proposed new central Hanford deadlines and results of the strategy discussions are being incorporated into the Tri-Party Agreement now.
"We have been involved in the Central Plateau since 1992," said John Price, the Washington State Department of Ecology's section manager for the Tri-Party Agreement. "We've learned a lot over the years. With what we've learned, we've been able to put together a smarter comprehensive plan."
With input from the tribes, the Hanford Advisory Board and the public, the Tri-Party agencies have developed a proposal to divide central Hanford cleanup planning into three areas: ground water, the inner area and the outer area.
Work will continue on some projects that pose a high risk to the environment in central Hanford, such as the Plutonium Finishing Plant, but planning would focus first on ground water cleanup and the outer area and then on the inner area.
The plans do not cover work to empty Hanford's tanks of 53 million gallons of radioactive waste and treat it, which has a separate set of deadlines.
"Central Plateau decisions are more difficult and technically complicated than the river corridor," Price said. The contamination levels are greater, some of the contamination is in soil deep underground, and some of the buildings are much larger and more complex, he said.
For the outer area and ground water, DOE would be required to have cleanup studies completed in 2012.
However, the inner area is more complicated and planning work has been divided into eight subprojects. Those include the huge processing canyons for removing plutonium from irradiated fuel, waste burial grounds, liquid waste disposal areas and the deep vadose zone.
Planning work for the deep vadose zone has been given another four or five years to allow DOE to develop new technologies for cleaning up the soil and preventing the contamination from moving into the ground water.
Technology does not exist to do the cleanup of soil deep underground to the level needed to protect the ground water beneath it, Faulk said.
New technologies being investigated include drying out soil or using chemical methods to contain contamination. In addition, DOE officials in Washington, D.C., are considering ways to find solutions, including establishing a research center at Hanford for deep vadose zone contamination.
The proposed new deadlines also would coordinate work to clean up processing canyons and waste sites in central Hanford. U Plant, on which cleanup work is already under way, would need to be down by September 2017 and an earthen barrier would need to be built over the collapsed plant by 2021.
DOE, the state and EPA also are working on a tentative agreement for new deadlines for treating and disposing of waste temporarily buried in central Hanford. It includes low-level waste and debris that is classified as transuranic waste because it is contaminated with plutonium.
The comment period for the proposed Tri-Party Agreement changes that have been agreed to so far by the agencies starts April 26. The agencies also would like to have a tentative agreement reached for the low-level and transuranic waste by then so it can be included in the same comment period.
-- Annette Cary: 582-1533; acary@tricityherald.com
