Billions could be saved in Hanford Site cleanup - here's how
In late July, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on the status of cleanup at the Hanford Site, highlighting opportunities to save tens of billions of dollars.
The Hanford Site presents one of the largest, most expensive cleanup projects in the world. The Hanford waste tanks are aging, and many are decades past their intended design life. In fiscal years 1997 through 2019, DOE spent over $10 billion to monitor, maintain, and retrieve waste from Hanford’s tanks.
DOE expects to spend at least $69 billion more on activities to retrieve tank waste and close the tanks, according to a January 2019 DOE report. GAO reported in January 2021 that DOE could save up to $18 billion by filling the closed tanks with grout (a concrete-like mixture) and leaving them in place, rather than exhuming them for disposal elsewhere, as the state of Washington may require.
The Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) is DOE’s current planned approach to treating Hanford’s tank waste. The WTP, which has been under construction since 2000, includes several waste treatment facilities, including a facility to vitrify – a process in which the waste is immobilized in glass – all of Hanford’s high-level waste and a separate facility to vitrify about 60 percent of its low-level waste. DOE’s current plan to treat the remaining (sometimes called supplemental) low-level waste is to construct and operate a second vitrification facility.
In May 2017, GAO reported that experts believed much of Hanford’s low-level waste could be safely grouted. In December 2021, GAO reaffirmed this finding and reported that several options existed for shipping the grouted waste off-site for disposal. This approach to treating and disposing of the supplemental low-level waste could save tens of billions of dollars and reduce certain risks, compared with vitrification.
GAO also found that DOE continues to face cost and schedule challenges related to its efforts to address the tank waste at Hanford and that DOE’s current plans for treating the waste assume significant increases in annual appropriations in the next 10 years – an assumption that is not guaranteed.
According to DOE’s estimate, annual spending on the tank waste cleanup mission at Hanford would need to reach almost $6 billion in fiscal year 2030. The main drivers for the increased costs in the next 10 years are as follows:
Completion of construction of the pretreatment facility (estimated to cost about $8 billion);
Construction of a second vitrification facility to treat supplemental LAW (about $7 billion); and
Operation of the treatment facilities and transfer of waste from existing tanks to staging tanks for treatment (about $17 billion).
GAO Recommendations
GAO has recommended that Congress consider clarifying, in a manner that does not impair the regulatory authorities of the Environmental Protection Agency and any state, DOE's authority to determine, in consultation with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, (1) whether portions of the tank waste can be managed as a waste type other than high-level waste and can be disposed of outside the state of Washington and (2) that residual tank waste can be managed as a waste type other than high-level waste.
As of June 2022, Congress has not yet addressed these matters. GAO has also made a number of recommendations to DOE related to the Hanford waste treatment mission. Some key recommendations include:
DOE should expand future analyses of potential supplemental low-level waste disposal options to include all federal and commercial facilities that could potentially receive grouted low-level waste from Hanford. DOE agreed with but has not yet fully implemented this recommendation;
DOE should follow the steps outlined in GAO's risk-informed decision-making framework as it makes decisions about the future of the pretreatment mission. DOE agreed with but has not yet fully implemented this recommendation; and
DOE should not resume construction on the WTP's pretreatment and high-level waste facilities until critical technologies are tested and verified as effective, the facilities' design has been completed to the level established by nuclear industry guidelines, and the contractor’s preliminary documented safety analysis complies with DOE nuclear safety regulations. DOE agreed with this recommendation and has not yet restarted construction on these facilities.
GAO's recommendations echo those made by the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) in our 2019 report, “Making Informed Decisions on DOE’s Proposed High-Level Waste Definition,” that:
Congress should consider clarifying DOE’s authority to manage and dispose of tank waste as other than high-level waste (HLW), consistent with existing authorities; and
DOE should expand the potential disposal options it assesses to include all facilities that receive grouted supplemental low-level waste.
Potential disposal facilities included those previously identified in reports by DOE or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Want to hear more? Listen to the ‘Gone Fission Nuclear Report’ podcast episode on grouting v. vitrification of Hanford’s waste.