By John Stang
The first melter at Hanford’s first vitrification facility is scheduled to start up in December, site officials told the Hanford Advisory Board this week, teeing up the long-awaited solidification of liquified Cold War plutonium-byproducts by 2023.
After the startup, it should take two months to increase the melter’s temperature to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, including one month of monitoring to see how the 300-ton machine works under high heat conditions, officials told the board Wednesday.
Hanford has 177 huge underground tanks holding 56 million gallons of highly radioactive wastes. The master plan is for Hanford to convert the wastes into a benign glass inside of the melters for eventual storage at a site yet to be determined. About 90 percent of the wastes are low-activity wastes holding 10 percent of the radioactivity and 10 percent are high-level wastes holding 90 percent of the radioactivity.
The U.S Department of Energy plans to build two low-activity vitrification facilities, each with two melters, plus a high-level waste glassification plant.
The first low-activity vitrification facility with two melters is scheduled to go online in late 2023 to handle up to 50 percent of the low-activity wastes. The second low-activity waste vitrification plant and the high-level waste plant are predicted to be built by the mid-2030s with the state of Washington and the U.S. Department of Energy currently in talks on more specific target dates.
After DOE and contractor Bechtel heat up the first melter in December, the second melter should switch on in April 2022, ahead of the planned start of vitrification in late 2023.
Mat Irwin, deputy assistant manager for the vitrification project, and his Bechtel counterpart Val McCain told the HAB Wednesday that glitches are expected to show up in 2022 and 2023, which will be addressed.
“Once we’ve committed that melter [to 2,100 degrees], we have to keep that melter in a molten state for the rest of its life. … That melter heat-up is the point of no return,” Irwin said.
Each melter has an estimated lifespan of five years before it will have to be shut down and replaced, Irwin. said. Parts are currently being identified and tracked down to build three replacement melters for later this decade.