A federal mediator will assist the U.S. Energy Department and the Washington state Ecology Department in their talks over cleanup milestones at the Hanford Site.
The parties have agreed to use the services of a federal mediator to assist in the “holistic talks” on Hanford remediation issues, according to a slide presentation from Suzanne Dahl, tank waste treatment section manager at the Ecology Department, for a Wednesday meeting.
“Holistic” is the term used repeatedly by state and federal officials in recent months to refer to wide-ranging talks on remediation issues such as ensuring that 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in Hanford’s underground tanks are treated and disposed of under prior legal agreements.
Dahl noted the agreement on the mediator as part of a state presentation to the Hanford Advisory Board in Richland, Wash. The board advises the state, DOE, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on policy issues connected to remediation of the site that produced plutonium for decades for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
Representatives from the three agencies have met several times since October and this week agreed to the scope of the talks, according to slides for Dahl’s presentation, which did not offer further details. The Hanford Advisory Board meeting was not webcast.
Ecology spokesman Randy Bradbury said the talks will center on a path forward for treatment of high-level waste; the pace and timing of closing underground radioactive waste tanks; final disposal of the tank waste, and various interim measures that could be taken to mitigate the other problems.
Additional topics can be added if all the parties agree. “We haven’t yet set out a schedule or determined logistics for the discussions, except to express the collective desire that they begin in January, 2020,” Bradbury said by email.
The parties will hire a mediator from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Bradbury said.
Washington Ecology Director Maia Bellon, who this week said she would retire from state service by Jan. 1, started pushing for “frank discussion” with the Energy Department in May. Bellon said Ecology has grown frustrated with the federal agency’s difficulty in sticking to cleanup timelines set in the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement signed by the state, EPA and DOE, as well as federal court consent decrees in 2010 and 2016.
Previously Bellon said the state was surprised by DOE’s “unilateral decision” in 2018 to stop construction of the low-activity waste pretreatment system. Instead, the federal agency instead shifted its focus to designing a tank side cesium removal (TSCR) facility.
The state agency also says DOE is doing only “limited design work” on the high-level waste facility now.
Bellon has also said the state might exercise its right, under the legal agreements, to go to court to force DOE to hasten certain work – such as removal of waste from leak-prone single-shell tanks. The state wants to ensure DOE can remove all waste from single-shell tanks by 2040, as stipulated under the Tri-Party Agreement.
Likewise, the state also wants the federal agency to ensure Bechtel’s nearly complete vitrification plant starts converting low-activity waste into glass by 2023 and high-activity material by 2036, as stipulated in a 2016 federal court consent decree.
