The Washington state Department of Ecology has issued an operating permit for the analytical laboratory at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.
This permit, issued in the spring, is the state agency’s first operating approval for the plant, being built by Bechtel to turn Hanford’s radioactive tank waste into a solidified glass form, Ecology spokeswoman Joanna Morse said by email Thursday. The operating approval for the analytical lab was incorporated into Hanford’s site-wide dangerous waste permit with the state, she added.
“The lab will analyze incoming waste from Hanford’s underground storage tanks to ensure that the correct glass-forming recipe is used to yield high-quality glass,” Morse said. “It will also sample waste after it has been vitrified to confirm that it meets cleanup requirements.”
The Bechtel-built laboratory is in startup and will begin officially operating when the plant starts processing low-activity waste, expected by 2023, under the regulatory compliance schedule with the state, Morse said. The laboratory is the first facility within the vitrification facility to go through all phases of the state’s permit process, from design to construction to operations.
Bechtel has described the lab as being about the size of a football field and 45 feet high. An emissions stack will sit upon the facility.
The operating permit expires after 10 years and must be renewed. The lab is expected to analyze about 3,000 samples each year and report results once the WTP is operational.
State approval is “another key step” toward startup of the direct-feed low-activity waste process at WTP as soon as possible, said Jason Young, the laboratory’s federal project director at the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s Office of River Protection at Hanford. “We appreciate Ecology’s timely review and approval of the permit as we get closer to WTP facility startup and commissioning.”
