Feds get more time to decide whether to ship liquid radioactive waste from WA

The Department of Energy will take more time to make a potentially controversial decision on where radioactive liquid waste from the Hanford nuclear site’s underground tanks will be turned into a concrete-like grout form.

DOE was required by the legally binding Tri-Party Agreement to decide by Dec. 31 where to grout some of its low-activity radioactive waste. Hanford has 56 million gallons of waste stored in underground tanks, some in tanks up to eight decades old that are prone to leaking.

It could grout the waste at Hanford or nearby Perma-Fix Northwest in Richland, or it could transport liquid waste to sites in Utah or Texas for grouting and also disposal there.

A DOE contractor has issued a request for bids to grout and dispose of tens of millions of gallons waste. The estimated value of the work is $4 billion.

Officials for the state of Oregon and Spokane, both of which could be on transportation routes for what could be 30 million gallons of the liquid waste, have raised concerns about shipping liquid waste.

DOE said not only has a site for grouting not been selected, but routes to transport the waste out of Washington state have not been determined.

The Washington state Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator, and DOE have reached an agreement to extend the Dec. 31 deadline to July 1, 2026, said Ecology.

“Any decision on solidification, location and transport will prioritize safety, will be based on sound science and will be consistent with Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency and other federal regulations,” DOE said in a statement.

After about five years of negotiations the state Department of Ecology, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. DOE finalized an agreement a year ago calling for DOE to retrieve radioactive waste from 22 tanks in Hanford’s 200 West Area and grout the waste for offsite disposal by 2040.

The tanks are among those farthest from the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, or vitrification plant, which has begun glassifying tank waste for permanent disposal. Waste in the 200 East Area is being piped to the vitrification plant for treatment.

2,000+ gallons of waste shipped

In a two-phase test of grouting Hanford tank waste for off-site disposal, first 3 gallons of waste were grouted, followed by about 2,000 gallons.

For the second phase, about 2,000 gallons of liquid low activity radioactive waste were shipped offsite without incident for both treatment and disposal.

About half went to EnergySolutions about 60 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah, and half went to Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas, which is close to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico that is used to dispose of other radioactive waste from national nuclear weapon programs.

In the initial three gallon test, the waste was grouted at Perma-Fix Environmental Solutions near the Hanford nuclear site at 2025 Battelle Blvd. in Richland. It was shipped in a solid form to Waste Control Specialists in Texas for disposal.

In 2023 Perma-Fix announced a labor agreement with the UA Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 598 to use local union workers to grout tank waste.

“Assuming the Department of Energy continues to consider the process of grout for Hanford’s least radioactive tank waste, we want to ensure they have access to the highest skilled and safest labor force in the industry,” said Nickolas Bumpaous, business manager of the pipefitters local, when the agreement was signed.

“Our partnership with Perma-Fix will ensure that the U.S. DOE has a local contractor with the know-how, skills and safety culture required to achieve Hanford’s cleanup mission,” he said.

Mark Duff, president at Perma-Fix Environmental Services, said in 2023 that he believed the relationship with Local 598 “increases the value of our offering to DOE while providing a treatment option that can accelerate the reduction of environmental liability in the region.”

Both the option of grouting waste on the Hanford site or sending it to nearby Perma-Fix Northwest for grouting would keep jobs in the Tri-Cities area.

Shipping liquid waste

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown told DOE in a public comment in May that if tank waste is shipped on Interstate 90 through Spokane — an alternative to sending it south through Oregon — it should be grouted first rather than hauled in liquid form.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said in the same public comment period that the “very consideration of transporting 32 million gallons of Hanford tank waste by rail or truck without adequate notice, discussion or consideration of potential and inherent risks to the citizens of the state of Oregon is unacceptable.”

Technical comments prepared by the Oregon Department of Energy that Kotek submitted said the state “strongly opposes the shipment of liquid tank waste through the state due to inherent risks and unknown routes. The state prefers onsite solidification in Washington prior to any transport through Oregon.”

DOE plans to use both grouting and vitrification to prepare low activity radioactive waste for disposal. The vitrification plant, which has a 65-acre campus in central Hanford, was never planned to be large enough to treat all of Hanford’s low activity tank waste. Grouting some of the waste will be less expensive than expanding the vitrification plant to glassify all of the waste, according to DOE.

However, the high level radioactive waste left after low activity radioactive waste is separated out of waste in underground tanks must be vitrified. DOE has a federal court deadline to start vitrifying high level waste by 2033.

Although vitrified low activity waste may be disposed of in a lined landfill in central Hanford, grouting had been determined to not be protective enough of the environment, given Hanford’s geology and climate. The Department of Ecology has insisted that grouted waste must be disposed of out of state.

The 580-square-mile Hanford site in Eastern Washington 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 was chemically processed to remove plutonium, leaving 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks.