Hanford Site gets until Oct. 15 to start making glass

The Department of Energy and Washington state have agreed to grant federal and contract managers a 75-day extension until Oct. 15 to start making glass from some of the less-radioactive tank waste at the Hanford Site at Richland, Wash.

The prior deadline was Aug. 1 and DOE officials announced this latest extension in a Monday morning press release.

This latest extension deal with the Washington state Department of Ecology delays startup of hot-commissioning of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant’s (WTP) Low-Activity Waste (LAW) Facility. It modifies the pre-existing consent decree with the state.

The hot commissioning deadline has been extended via consent decree modifications in the past, including a significant one granted to make up for work time lost during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The 2024 written order coming out of years of “holistic talks” on Hanford cleanup, maintained the Aug. 1, 2025 glass-making target for low-level radioactive waste. The WTP is supposed to start turning high-level radioactive waste into glass starting in 2033. On a parallel path, the DOE did ship 2,000 gallons of liquid waste to Texas and Utah sites to be converted into a concrete-like grout form before disposal. 

In the Monday press release, DOE said this latest extension gives work crews more time to finish testing out equipment and components used in vitrifying some low-level radioactive waste into a solid glass form. The extra time also gives the state more leeway to finish its final permitting.

“There are a few various final permitting actions Ecology has to take to approve the start of low-activity waste treatment,” said Ecology spokesperson Ryan Miller in an email to Exchange Monitor. These actions will be taken after DOE completes its Environmental Performance Demonstration Test, Miller said. Eventually the state will issue a letter that allows the feds to conditionally treat 3 million gallons of low-activity tank waste, Miller said. 

“The process of commissioning this first-in-kind facility is comprehensive and dynamic,” Hanford Field Office Acting Manager Brian Harkins said in the release. “DOE has been working diligently with its contractors, and we anticipate that this will allow sufficient time to complete the complex commissioning process.

“While we’re eager to see the Low Activity Waste Facility begin operation, we recognize the importance of thorough testing of this system for performance and safety,” said Stephanie Schleif, Ecology’s Nuclear Waste program manager, in the same release. “We look forward to the facility treating tank waste early this fall,” Schleif went on to say.

““Hanford Challenge is not surprised by this latest delay in starting glass production at the LAW facility,” the citizen group’s executive director Nikolas Peterson said via email. 

Whistleblowers at Hanford have outlined concerns about the vitrification plant over the years, Peterson said. “Until there is sustained investment in independent oversight and real accountability at Hanford, these kinds of delays will continue to undermine public trust and progress.”

The WTP was built by Bechtel National. There is about 56 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored in underground tanks at Hanford. It is the residue of decades of plutonium production for the government. 

In December 2000, Bechtel started work on the construction contract, currently valued at more than $16 billion. Bechtel will also run the plant for several months before turning it over to the waste management contractor, perhaps next year.  

BWX Technologies-led Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C) took over in February as the contractor in charge of the tank waste.