The Government Accountability Office said Tuesday the Energy Department should use best practices when seeking alternatives to the Pretreatment Facility for the Waste Treatment Plant being built at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The Pretreatment Facility is intended to separate radioactive waste into high-level and low-level streams before processing at the Waste Treatment Plant, the GAO noted in a report. In 2012, having already spent $3.8 billion, the DOE Office of Environmental Management suspended construction due to technical challenges such as hydrogen buildup in pipes.
Between fiscal 2013 and 2018, the agency spent $752 million on the Pretreatment Facility. About half was used for overhead, oversight, procurements, and upkeep, with the rest spent on fixing technical problems. Construction of the Pretreatment Facility remains on hold, although maintenance continues.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bechtel have said at current funding levels of nearly $700 million per year, the Pretreatment Facility probably won’t be finished by the 2031 date required by an amendment consent decree.
While the Energy Department considers problems with the pretreatment mechanism – such as the threat of explosion from hydrogen buildup in pipes and vessels, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is not completely satisfied that concerns over hydrogen buildup as well as pipe corrosion have been addressed, GAO said.
Questions linger on whether Environmental Management has sufficiently “designed, engineered, or tested solutions to the challenges,” the GAO said.
In July 2019, the DOE nuclear cleanup office agreed with Bechtel’s conclusion that the threat of explosion posed by hydrogen buildup in pipes or vessels at the Pretreatment Facility has been resolved. The GAO said “resolved” in this contest should mean no further research is needed and the solution is ready for a detailed design. However, Bechtel and the Energy Department have not yet designed the solutions, according to this week’s report. The congressional watchdog added that resolving the technical challenges likely will require Bechtel to modify its designs for the Pretreatment Facility.
The Office of Environmental Management in 2019 began an analysis of alternatives for treating Hanford’s high-level waste, with the document expected in September. One of the front-burner options is tank-side cesium removal of the material.
The agency’s Hanford Office of River Protection expects a current demonstration project to be complete as early as 2021 and, depending on the results, could add more TSCR units near other tank farms to prepare more waste.
There is roughly 56 million gallons of radioactive waste at Hanford left over from decades of plutonium production inside 177 underground waste storage tanks. Most of it is less radioactive low-activity waste. By the end of 2023 Bechtel is supposed to be able to start converting Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste from tanks into a glass-like substance at WTP.
In addition to pursuing DFLAW plans at Hanford, DOE also “briefly pursued” the Test Bed Initiative in which low-level waste would be directly drawn out of the tanks using existing technology before being stabilized with grout on-site and then shipped to Waste Control Specialists in Texas, the GAO said. But after treating 3 gallons of waste from underground tanks, the Energy Department suspended the effort in June 2019.
In a footnote, the GAO said the Office of Environmental Management withdrew the state permit for Phase 2 of the Test Bed Initiative, saying it was in reaction to a May 2019 letter from the state Department of Ecology. For fiscal 2020, Senate and House appropriators recommended DOE spend no more than $10 million on this initiative given that starting up DFLAW operations should be the top priority for the Office of River Protection.
The Government Accountability Office made two recommendations in the report, saying the alternatives analysis for pretreatment of high-level waste should include 1) a mission need statement and 2) a life-cycle cost estimate for the baseline scenario. The GAO also said the Energy Department should maintain close communication with the state during this process.
By the end of 2023, the Bechtel-built Waste Treatment Plant is supposed to start converting low-level radioactive waste to a glass-like substance for disposal. Construction of the Pretreatment Facility is supposed to be finished by 2031; full operation of the WTP, including vitrification of both the high-level and low-level wastes, should start by 2036.
Energy Department Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White said, in comments included in the report, that his office is moving forward on the recommended analysis.
Government managers need analyses of this type to make the best decisions for pretreating high-level waste at the Waste Treatment Plant, the GAO said in the report. Construction of the entire waste vitrification plant began in 2000 and has already cost in excess of $11 billion. The Energy Department’s 2019 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report said completing construction of the WTP would cost between $19 billion and $30 billion beyond what’s already been spent.
The Energy Department declined to comment beyond the comments provided for the GAO report.
