The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Richland, Wash., has made its first shipment of concentrate from the Effluent Management Facility (EMF) to a nearby plant operated by Perma-Fix for grouting, DOE said this week.
The EMF concentrate is a liquid waste byproduct created when Hanford’s radioactive underground tank waste is vitrified into a glass form at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which started limited operations last October.
“By removing the need to reprocess EMF concentrate back through WTP, we can maximize plant efficiency and treat up to 20 percent more tank waste,” Hanford Field Office Manager Ray Geimer said in a Monday news release.
According to the DOE release, anywhere from one-to-three gallons of the less-hazardous EMF concentrate are generated for every gallon of waste immobilized into glass form at WTP.
The Washington state Department of Ecology approved grouting of the EMF secondary waste on May 26 and the permit took effect June 26, an Ecology spokesperson said in a Monday email reply to a reporter’s question. In addition, the January 2025 Holistic Agreement between Washington and the feds said DOE “will retrieve waste from 22 tanks in Hanford’s 200 West Area and grout the low-activity portion for offsite disposal,” the state spokesperson said.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has asked the state regulator to prioritize additional grout plans for Tank AP-106 within the AP Tank Farm. The state, however, has said it does not want to “divert” pretreated waste that would otherwise be made into glass at the WTP.
“This isn’t an either-or-situation,” said Geimer in the Monday release.