The Department of Energy said Thursday it has completed its 2,000-gallon demonstration of the so-called Test Bed Initiative at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
In a press release, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said it has sent two shipments of treated, low-level radioactive tank waste to commercial disposal sites in Texas and Utah.
The tank waste was hauled away to Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, Texas and EnergySolutions in Clive, Utah. The Hanford tank waste will be disposed of at these sites after being solidified into a concrete-like grout form.
While some communities in the Pacific Northwest opposed the idea of shipping the waste before it is grouted, DOE said in a youtube video that the waste has been treated to reduce much of the radionuclides and transporting liquid waste has been done several times previously.
The 2,000 gallons, divided evenly between Utah and Texas, will be placed inside robust 330-gallon “totes,” and carried via tractor trailers, DOE said in the video.
“The Test Bed Initiative (TBI) is a demonstration to evaluate a safe, effective and efficient option for accelerating environmental cleanup of the Hanford site”, acting Hanford Deputy Manager Brian Harkins said in the press release. “This successfully executed demonstration will provide valuable information options moving forward.”
It has taken DOE and the Washington Department of Ecology about a decade to get to this point. In 2017, a TBI test done with Perma-Fix solidified three gallons of low activity tank waste into a cement-like grot form for disposal.
Hanford has about 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous tank waste left over from decades of plutonium production for national defense. Most of the tank waste is low level. For years, DOE and the National Academy of Science have been studying the use of grout as a lower-cost alternative to building a second vitrification plant at Hanford.
In August, the long-awaited Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant built by Bechtel National is scheduled to start vitrifying some of Hanford’s less radioactive waste into a glass form. The Waste Treatment Plant, however, cannot accommodate all of Hanford’s low-level waste, DOE has said.
