It’s time sanity returned to the Hanford nuclear waste disposal program.

It’s so easy in the nuclear waste business to throw around numbers like “an extra $10 billion next year” or “$160 billion in the next 50 years,” or “it’ll take $600 billion to clean-up DOE sites.” The numbers don’t seem real, like play money or taxpayer dollars. That’s because to the people who make the decisions to spend that money, it isn’t real.

But to us scientists, these numbers are real. We know what they mean, what foolish non-scientific decisions made them so high.

And we know why they don’t need to be so high.

That is the case with the bizarre 57 million gallons of wet salt and oily peanut butter-textured gunky nuclear waste from weapons manufacturing that sits in 177 huge subsurface tanks at the Hanford site.

There are some good ways to handle this waste, and some bad ways. Thirty years ago, the powers that be chose one of the bad ways. Those people chose vitrification, or turning the waste into glass, even to treat the least radioactive waste in these tanks.

It turns out that the chemistry of this waste is not very compatible with glass. So, the cost to vitrify has continuously increased as has the schedule — from $9 billion, to $20 billion to $100 billion and beyond, and from 30 years to 40 years to 60 years and beyond.

And these costs and schedule will continue to grow. Congress has never provided, nor ever will provide, enough funding to carry out this activity. Congress keeps allotting only half to a third of what is needed each year for vitrification of the Hanford tank waste. So the cost and schedule will only continue to grow.

Chemically, this waste would much rather be in grout. Grouting this waste is recommended by four National Laboratories, the GAO, the National Academies of Science, and almost every scientist in this field. Not surprisingly, grouting would be 1/5th the cost of vitrification, and could be done in half the time. There are already licensed and permitted commercial facilities in-place in America to take this grouted low level waste as they do from commercial nuclear power plants, hospitals, laboratories and universities. Not so for the vitrified low level waste. That waste is destined to remain at Hanford within view of the Columbia River buried in geology that is less favorable than the commercial low level disposal sites in other parts of the U.S.

We developed grout formulations that are better than glass — better compressive strength, lower leachability. The State of Washington refuses to acknowledge the science behind advanced grout formulations. Instead, they insist that DOE vitrify even the low-level waste. DOE could start grouting this waste right now. We have done enough large-scale tests to know exactly how to do it and how it will come out.

Following the science usually decreases costs and schedule. It’s why you hire us scientists to do these things in the first place. And following the science is always safer for workers. Grouting this waste provides much lower risks to Hanford site workers than vitrification.

Grouting this waste also provides much lower impacts to the environment. For every million gallons vitrified, 1.8 million gallons of processing liquid is dumped in the ground, plus up to a million more gallons of water to retrieve and move the waste around, while 34,000 tons of CO2 and 37 tons of ammonia go up the stacks. None of that occurs with grouting.

Not only that, but over the decades, the waste itself has changed dramatically. The most radioactive components have been through one or two decay lives and much of them were removed from the tanks in the 1980s. What was once considered high level nuclear waste (HLW) is now mostly low-level nuclear waste (LLW) with some transuranic waste (TRU). Very little HLW is left. Yet, we are treating it as if it’s all still HLW, a position forced by the State of Washington’s regulators.

The main problem is a near-religious adherence to past agreements that are no longer applicable or that were foolishly decided in the first place. The State of Washington is fearful that any changes to the status quo will void the goals of agreements, such as the Tri-Party Agreement, leaving them powerless over the process. The facts are that grouting is the only way to meet the cost and schedule deadlines of the Tri-Party Agreement. The remaining WTP facilities can be completed in such a way that involves none of the technical uncertainties that are strangling the program in its present form.

The goal of Hanford’s tank waste management program should be to effectively, safely and efficiently treat the waste, rather than be in thrall to the status quo which for decades has not resulted in lowering any real environmental risk or government liability. Let’s move forward today with real environmental cleanup.

We know what to do. We know how to do it. We know how long it will take and we know how much it will cost.