Roughly 26,000 gallons of waste remains to be extracted from Tank AY-102 at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Department of Energy’s waste contractor for the former plutonium production facility said Friday.
Washington River Protection Solutions on March 3, 2016, began retrieving the estimated 800,000 gallons of liquid and sludge from the double-shell tank, where waste is leaking into the space between the two hulls. Progress since then has been halting at times as workers dealt with various challenges, including the amount of waste accumulutating in the annulus, the space between the two tank shells. The deadline to complete retrieval is March 4 of this year.
Winter weather has also been a hindrance in recent weeks, WRPS President Mark Lindholm said in a Friday update on Tank AY-102 and the overall issue of vapors from the waste containers.
Following the Christmas holiday, “Operations resumed on Dec. 29 and sluicing was performed continuously for 30 hours until it was shut down early on Dec. 31 for air bottle delivery. Retrieval resumed that afternoon before being shut down due to elevated ammonia readings from the AP Farm ventilation exhaust stack,” Lindholm wrote. “Fluctuating ammonia levels prevented operations on Jan. 1 and excessive snowfall caused the cancelation of retrieval operations on Jan. 2. Since then, sluice pit temperatures have dropped below our required threshold for operating the system.”
Tank AY-102 still contains about 10 percent of the amount of sludge waste it held at the beginning of operations, according to Lindholm.
