Staff Reports
WC Monitor
07/31/2015
The Department of Energy and state of Washington have reached agreement on proposed new Tri-Party Agreement milestones for solid waste stored at the Hanford Site. The Tri-Party Agreement agencies will consider adopting the changes after a public meeting and public comment period. Following revisions five years ago, DOE has asked the state to again revisit the M-091 series of milestones covering the site’s mixed low-level and mixed transuranic waste due to the shutdown of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The proposed new milestones are intended to give DOE more flexibility to deal with the waste until the repository is operating again and Hanford waste is allowed to be sent there.
State officials said this spring during budget discussions that Hanford’s transuranic waste is not scheduled to be shipped to WIPP until after the waste from other weapons sites. Hanford has 20,000 containers of waste waiting to be disposed of either at WIPP if characterization shows they contain mixed transuranic waste or at Hanford if they contain mixed low-level waste. About 8,000 containers, some of them deteriorating, are stored at the Hanford Central Waste Complex. In 2014, Washington fined DOE for violating state dangerous waste regulations. One of the incidents that led to the fine was the discovery that a box that had been dug up from temporary burial and stored at the Central Waste Complex had contamination dripping from it.
The state agreed to consider new milestones, but had two requirements, said John Price, state Tri-Party Agreement section manager. The state heard during public comments before the last major revision to the M-091 milestones in 2010 that stakeholders wanted all Hanford transuranic waste shipped to WIPP by 2030; the state wants to retain that deadline. The state also is insisting on more annual milestones to track progress so that it is confident DOE can meet the 2030 deadline, Price said. The 2010 revisions included some target milestones for retrieving buried waste that were not enforceable but were meant to show work was on track while giving DOE some flexibility in the work it could complete to meet the milestones. The department has missed some target milestones, and now has said it at risk of missing enforceable milestones, Price said.
The proposed new milestones put more emphasis on treating and repackaging waste that has been retrieved from temporary burial and now is stored in drums and boxes above ground for eventual processing or disposal. The changes would add an annual requirement for repackaging waste and replace retrieval milestones with a milestone to determine a new retrieval schedule in 2020. The Tri-Party Agreement agencies also would add more milestones in the future to address waste retrieval, storage, and treatment.
DOE would be required to treat or certify for shipment to WIPP 280 cubic meters of waste in fiscal 2015. To provide flexibility, the milestone allows the waste to be either mixed transuranic or low-level waste. A year later it would need to certify another 280 cubic meters of waste, and then submit a change request for milestones for treatment and certification in 2017 and 2018. DOE would be required to submit a change request in 2020 to establish the schedule for shipping both mixed transuranic waste that had been in above-ground storage as of 2009 and the retrievably buried waste to have them to WIPP by 2030. Also in 2020, DOE will be required to submit a change request to establish a schedule for retrieving remote-handled waste by 2028.
The proposed new milestones would give DOE flexibility by grouping the retrieval of various types of waste into a single set of milestones for “just-in-time processing.” The waste would be certified and shipped to WIPP when it is retrieved rather than being stored for years above ground. Hanford has some waste that it does not have capabilities to process now, including remote-handled waste that is expected to be in the 200 Area caissons and large boxes of waste. Rather than requiring DOE to build a facility to deal with remote-handled waste and oversize containers, the proposed new milestones would demand DOE submit a study in 2016 of alternatives for retrieving, designating, storing, and retrieving that waste. Options could include relying on commercial capabilities. A milestone change request for acquisition and modification of capabilities and facilities would be due a year later. Comments on the M-091 milestone proposed changes may be emailed to [email protected] through Aug. 21. The public meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 11 at the Richland Public Library Gallery.
