WASH. STATE REGULATORS CONTINUE TO QUESTION DOE’S PLANS FOR HANFORD TANK WASTE EIS

Washington state environmental regulators are continuing to push the Department of Energy to identify a preferred supplemental waste treatment approach in the final version of the Hanford Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement. In a letter sent late last week to Tracy Mustin, the No. 2 official in DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, the Washington State Department of Ecology warned that DOE’s current plan to omit a preferred supplemental waste treatment approach would leave the final EIS “incomplete” and is not supported by the analyses included in the document. “USDOE has invested eight years, $85 million and all of Ecology’s work providing cooperating agency review and consultation in this TC&WM EIS. Ecology expects that investment should result in a final TC&WM EIS that supports making a supplemental treatment decision,” Jane Hedges, manager of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program, wrote in the July 18 letter obtained by WC Monitor.

 

At issue is how DOE ultimately plans to address the low-activity tank waste at Hanford that won’t be processed by the Waste Treatment Plant under construction at the site. DOE officials acknowledged earlier this year that the final Hanford tank closure EIS would not identify a preferred supplemental treatment approach, saying that the Department wants to further evaluate potential alternatives. Washington state, though, has long supported the use of a second Low Activity Waste Facility, similar to the one currently planned for the WTP. DOE is required to make a final decision on a supplemental waste treatment technology by April 30, 2015—a schedule that the Department may be putting in jeopardy by not identifying a preferred alternative in the new EIS, according to Washington state regulators. “All alternatives in the TC&WM EIS have been extensively evaluated many times with the same results. The results are clear. USDOE should move forward to identify a preferred alternative now to support a supplemental treatment decision by 2015,” Hedges wrote.