The timeline to start converting low-level radioactive waste into glass at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has already been slowed by technical and workforce issues and more challenges could arise, a DOE manager told the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

The Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant is a complex project and if officials think of commissioning as merely turning a key “we are fooling ourselves,” Tom Fletcher, DOE’s assistant manager for the project said Wednesday.

While DOE’s Office of Environmental Management targeted the end of 2023 for starting vitrification at the plant’s Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste facilities, an agency budget official said in early December, the milestone could slip into 2024. But Fletcher appeared to leave the agency even more wiggle room.

“My gut tells me we are still well within the consent decree milestone that’s been adjusted for the COVID impacts,” into early 2025, Fletcher said. A modified consent agreement approved by a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington approved a formula allowing DOE and plant contractor Bechtel until 2025 to start low-activity waste vitrification.

The COVID-19 pandemic and workforce attrition have affected the plant timeline in various ways, Fletcher said. Along with time lost when workers were forced to stay home, there are also supply chain backups.

What once “was off the shelf equipment is now taking a number of weeks to get in,” Fletcher said. “It is not what it used to be.”

In addition, Hanford attrition over the past couple of years has increased from roughly 12% to 22%, Fletcher said. Part of this is driven by the much-discussed demographics of an aging workforce.

Additionally, Fletcher said it could be April before heat-up resumes at the first melter at the Waste Treatment Plant. The warmup was halted during October after problems were encountered. Some issues have been solved, while others remain, Fletcher said. “The system is designed to operate really well at 100% power, not so well at the lower end,” he added.

The panel for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is assisting Savannah River National Laboratory’s research into options such as grout for supplemental low-activity waste that cannot be processed at the vitrification plant. 

The WTP was designed to process all high-level waste, but low-level waste accounts by volume for most of the 56 million gallons underground tank waste left over from decades of plutonium production.