Although the Department of Energy missed an August target to start making glass from low-level radioactive waste, the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant is on the brink of operation, an advisory panel for the Hanford Site heard Wednesday.
“We are so close, so close to starting that thing up,” DOE’s acting manager for the Hanford Site, Brian Harkins told the Hanford Advisory Board (HAB). Harkins was referring to the Direct-Feed-Low-Activity-Waste Facilities at the Waste Treatment Plant.
Hanford managers said last month that DOE and the Washington state Department of Ecology have granted a 75-day extension, until Oct. 15, to start vitrifying some of the 56 million gallons of tank waste into a solid glass form.
Both melters are running and making glass from a simulant, Harkins told the advisory board.
This comes 36 years after Hanford was declared a cleanup site, and no longer making plutonium. “We will be starting the first final treatment of tank waste.” It’s been “too long” and “I’m pretty excited about it,” Harkins said.
“We will start pretty slow,” Harkins said of plant operations. “We probably won’t see full production out of that plant for the first year.”
The plant, built by Bechtel National, is undergoing its final battery of tests and is also getting some final permits from the state of Washington.
On a related topic, Harkins said the prospect of using a concrete-like grout to solidify some of Hanford’s low-level waste could be a “game changer” for the former plutonium production complex. This would allow treatment of the waste quicker and cheaper than vitrification, Harkins said.
