The Energy Department is on track to empty most of the waste in a leaky double-shell tank at the Hanford Site in Washington state by a March 4 regulatory deadline — a job likely to cost more than $40 million, a DOE official said Wednesday.
The final bill for draining waste from Tank AY-102 is “going to be over $40 million,” Reggie Eakins, technical program manager for DOE’s Office of River Protection, told the agency-chartered Hanford Advisory Board in a meeting webcast from Richland, Wash.
DOE’s tank farm prime contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, disclosed the leak in the double-shell tank in 2012.
Determining the cause of the leak, and whether the leak can be repaired, will take until at least September, Eakins said. Waste is entering the “annulus” between the two shells, but there is no sign it has escaped into the environment.
Tank AY-102 was supposed to be the tank that fed some 55 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste from Hanford tank farms into the Waste Treatment Plant Bechtel National is building at the site. The plant will turn the waste — a byproduct of Cold War-era plutonium production — into more easily storable radioactive glass.
DOE has made no official decision about whether AY-102 can be repaired, and Eakins’ personal prognosis was grim.
“I don’t think anyone thinks that’s going to happen, but that has to be looked at,” Eakins told the board.
