A permit that will allow Energy Department contractor Bechtel National to build a facility crucial to starting solidification of Cold War-era waste in Washington state by 2022 goes out for public comment next month, the state Ecology Department announced late last week.
“Ecology plans to start a 30-day public comment period in middle October on a proposed new air permit for the Effluent Management Facility (EMF) for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP),” the department wrote in a Thursday email notice. “The EMF supports processing of secondary liquid waste streams generated during low-activity waste melter offgas control system operation. It will also process small amounts of effluent from the Lab radioactive liquid waste disposal system vessels and waste transfer line flushing.”
Permit specifics will be posted online at the department’s website when the permit is eligible for public comment next month, Ecology said, adding “no changes to any existing WTP air permits will occur.”
The Effluent Management Facility is the least far along of all the infrastructure required to treat low-level waste at the Hanford Site, the former plutonium production site near the city of Richland. EMF’s construction requires three major modifications to Bechtel National’s permit with the state, the last of which will is set to be submitted to Olympia in fall 2017, Bechtel has said.
WTP will convert Hanford’s 56 million gallons of mostly liquid chemical and radioactive waste — including less-contaminated low-activity waste and more dangerous high-level waste — into more easily storable glass form in a process known as vitrification.
In 2022, DOE will start piping low-activity waste directly into WTP from the site’s waste storage tank farm in a process dubbed direct feed low-activity waste. The agency is legally bound to begin high-level waste treatment by 2036.
