The Department of Energy indicated in a draft report issued Tuesday that vitrified low-activity waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state can be disposed of at the facility, rather than requiring transfer to another location.
The agency will accept public comment through Sept. 26 on its draft Waste Incidental to Reprocessing Evaluation. The agency said it is also consulting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the proposal.
In addition, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management will hold an online public meeting June 10 on the draft document. Details on the online session will be released closer to the meeting date, according to a notice Tuesday in the Federal Register.
The public input and consultation with NRC will help the Energy Department write its final WIR evaluation.
The process of converting waste from Hanford’s 177 underground storage tanks into a glass form for disposal is expected to start by the end of 2023 at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel.
The draft concerns roughly 23.5 million gallons of radioactive waste, less than half of the 56 million gallons of the material generated by plutonium production during the Manhattan Project and Cold War.
That processed waste would be designated mixed low-level waste, rather than high-level radioactive waste (HLW), and could be disposed of at Hanford’s Integrated Disposal Facility, the draft says. The radioactive dose risk from this material would be no more than low-level radioactive waste, according to DOE’s calculations.
The Energy Department expects about 13,500 containers of vitrified waste will be produced using the Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) approach and subsequently transferred to the disposal facility
High-level waste will still presumably one day be sent to a national underground repository, such as the stalled Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
Written comments on the draft should be sent to Jennifer Colborn with DOE’s Office of River Protection, 2440 Stevens Drive, Richland, WA 99354. Alternatively, comments can be emailed to: [email protected].
A fact sheet on the process is also available.
