The Hanford Advisory Board is calling for the Department of Energy to ramp up to $4 billion in annual spending at the Hanford Site in Washington state, despite DOE officials saying that will not happen.
A combination of operating the Waste Treatment Plant starting within five years from now while construction continues on parts of the facility, plus dealing with deteriorating facilities elsewhere at the former plutonium production site, will require $4 billion budgets for about five years starting in 2022, according to project projections.
Of the $4 billion, about $1.2 billion will be needed for Richland Operations Office projects to comply with cleanup milestones set under the Tri-Party Agreement, the Washington state Department of Ecology says. The Richland Operations Office is in charge of managing the site and most cleanup except that related to Hanford’s waste storage tanks and the Waste Treatment Plant.
“Hanford is in a dangerous and destructive cycle in terms of its funding,” the board wrote in advice to DOE finalized Thursday. “The amount of funding required to maintain Hanford’s aging facilities, site infrastructure and surveillance requires a substantial amount of funding, roughly $600-$700 million per year.”
Many of Hanford’s buildings and storage facilities are 50-70 years old, according to the board. “Delays add to overall costs to the cleanup both because of the large amount of money spent on maintenance and because degradation from delay increases the risk of significant accidents,” the board said. “With funding below budget request, paying for these significant added costs further reduces the amount of funding available for cleanup.”
Examples include the partial collapse of the oldest PUREX plant radioactive waste storage tunnel in May and stabilizing the second PUREX tunnel; the $100 million spent to empty double-shell tank AY-102, which had multiple leaks between its shells; and reroofing the REDOX processing plant to keep it stable until it can be remediated.
