Washington state Ecology officials should consider grouting low-level Hanford waste | Guest Opinion

At a public meeting on May 16, 2019, the Washington State Department of Ecology spokesperson, Suzanne Dahl, insisted that all low-activity waste “must be vitrified” in spite of recent recommendations of experts in three reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a consortium of national laboratories, and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

These reports concluded that an alternative method for grouting low-level waste and disposing of it in a licensed facility out-of-state is safer, much less costly, and can be done decades sooner than vitrification, thereby protecting both workers and public health and safety.

Ms. Dahl’s statement was a wake-up call to us that expert studies and recommendations regarding any alternative to vitrification will not make any difference to the Department of Ecology. Ecology continues to require that any alternative treatment of the waste in the tanks must be “as-good-as-glass,” even though that requirement has no legal or technical definition nor regulatory foundation.

This rigid view tells us that the Department of Ecology is illogically committed to an outdated “status quo” waste treatment plan that is unachievable due to the current lifecycle cost estimate that approaches a trillion dollars with an unknowable completion schedule that could reach into the next century.

Brian Vance, DOE Hanford Site Manager, certainly knows that congressional funding to meet “vitrification-only” milestones is simply not feasible, not now, and certainly not in future fiscal years as Hanford cleanup requirements climb to $4 billion and more per year. DOE must resolve the LLW cost and schedule challenge now to afford the Hanford tank waste mission.

DOE and Ecology are currently in negotiations on treatment and disposal of tank waste. With a new Department of Ecology Hanford Site manager, David Bowen, this seems the perfect time for agency collaboration. We call on Brian Vance and David Bowen to work together to quickly move forward on the next phase of off-site treatment and out-of-state disposal of LLW derived from Hanford tanks.

When NEA developed the Clean Up Hanford Now initiative, we were serious about the need to move from the Hanford status quo cleanup plan of vitrifying all the waste removed from the tanks to implementing the Test Bed Initiative (TBI) alternative treatment method, now called Low-Level Waste Offsite Disposal (LLWOD) by DOE.

We encourage DOE to immediately resubmit the LLWOD permit request. DOE owes our community and U.S. taxpayers a credible, cost-effective approach to clean up Hanford as soon as possible.

The current status quo plan includes construction of a Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) vitrification plant, the cost of which is currently over budget by more than $12 billion, and with a schedule that is behind by more than 15 years. Further, under the current plan to vitrify low-level waste, only 40 percent of the waste in the 177 underground tanks will be processed. A second vitrification plant would be required and would need to be built.

Even more frustrating is the ever-growing cost. The GAO identified that for every dollar spent from the billions appropriated for tank waste cleanup annually, the lifecycle cost increases by a factor of $4 because the annual appropriations are never enough to meet requirements and stay “on schedule.” (see https://www.cleanuphanfordnow.org/cost-scheduling for GAO data).

The LLWOD, on the other hand, was designed to demonstrate removing the low-level waste stored in the Hanford tanks, commercially grouting the waste, and shipping it to Texas for disposal at a federally licensed and permitted facility. The first phase of the demonstration — treating and disposing of 3 gallons of LLW — was completed in December 2018. We understand that the DOE’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is now ready to implement the second phase of the demonstration — the removal, treatment, and offsite disposal of 2,000 gallons of LLW.

We remind the Department of Ecology that its responsibility is regulation. It is neither qualified nor has the authority to direct the DOE-ORP on how to do its job. Until now, it appears that the Department of Ecology has used its regulatory authority under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to define or classify the tank waste and use the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) as a crutch to support the outdated status quo cleanup plan.

NEA’s co-chair Bob Ferguson’s past experience working for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successor agencies, including DOE, contributed to our understanding that the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), as amended in 1954, gives DOE the authority to define the waste and implement the LLWOD without interference from the Department of Ecology. There is no provision in the AEA that gives the Department of Ecology any authority to classify nuclear waste or dictate how it must be treated for disposal outside Washington State.

In 2010, the founders of NEA filed a lawsuit as private citizens against President Obama and Secretary Chu’s illegal decision to shut down the Yucca Mountain Project.

The U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruled that the President did not have the authority to shut down the Project and required the government to complete the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository license evaluation. The Court reminded the country that not even the President has the authority to violate the law. The same can be said for a case where a state agency frustrates Federal law by acting above its authority, with the result that some Department of Ecology staff members could become personally liable for acting outside their regulatory authority.

We hope that the Department of Ecology will stay within its legal authority to regulate the DOE’s permit application when it is submitted to implement the LLWOD Phase 2 demonstration.

Bob Ferguson, Bill Lampson, and Gary Petersen are longtime Tri-Cities business leaders and founders of Northwest Energy Associates, Clean Up Hanford Now initiative. Progress status of the DOE permit and the LLWOD demonstration are available on the organization’s website: www.cleanuphanfordnow.org

This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 11:01 AM.