The Department of Energy said this week its nuclear cleanup branch has now removed radioactive waste from 24 of its single-shell tanks at the Hanford Site in Richland, Wash.
It has only taken about seven months for DOE’s BWXT-led contractor, Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C), to move 79,000 gallons of waste from Single-Shell Tank A-106 to a double-shell tank, the department said in a press release.
H2C dissolved the surface salt-based waste with water to help move the liquid sludge to a safer double-shell, DOE said.
In October, DOE and its contractor will turn their attention to single-shell tank, A-103, which will be the 25th to be emptied. DOE said.
Some old single-shell tanks have proven leak-prone and double-shell tanks provide an extra layer of protection to groundwater and the Columbia River.
Hanford stopped making plutonium at the end of the Cold War in 1989. At that time 56 million gallons of waste was in 177 underground tanks and 149 of them are single-shell.
“To date, about 3.5 million gallons of waste have been removed from 24 single-shell tanks,” DOE said in the news release.
“We’re not just emptying tanks, we’re creating momentum,” said Hanford Field Office Manager Ray Geimer in the release. “Every completed retrieval reduces the risk in the single-shell tanks and positions more waste for treatment through our dual glass-plus-grout strategy, allowing us to safely increase the pace of progress.”