COVER STORY | CLEANING UP US LEGACY WASTE
Above left: The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilisation Plant Above right: Clean up at the Hanford site is funded through both the Richland DoE office and the Department of River Protection Source: Bechtel
The site now plans to close three tanks (9, 10, and 11)
that are below the water table. Funding for the programme is also supplied via the
Department of River Protection which has asked for a $271m (15.6%) increase in funding to around $2bn in 2025. The increase includes the costs of beginning of hot commissioning and ramp up of capability for a direct-feed low-activity waste strategy. The Department of River Protection is also partly
responsible for funding cleanup at the Hanford site, alongside Richland’s FY 2025 request. Richland manages all cleanup activities at Hanford not managed by the Office of River Protection. At this site the Low-Activity Waste Facility recently
completed the final test of key safety systems, including coping with a loss of power. “This was the ultimate test to demonstrate that the emissions treatment system can respond to this worst-case scenario,” said Mat Irwin,
Hanford acting assistant manager for the WTP Project. “The test was true to life, and the plant responded exactly as it would during full operations.” The completion of this test means the Low-Activity Waste Facility emissions treatment system is now ready for the next stages of operation. The budget request also supports modifications to the
Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility for transfer of the caesium-strontium capsules to dry storage by August 2025. Oak Ridge has requested an additional $21bn, up 3.2%
on the £637bn it received in 2023. That covers continuing cleanup activities at the Oak Ridge site, addressing high- risk excess contaminated facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and design for the On-Site Waste Disposal Facility. The increase also supports continued progress on cleanup of contaminated facilities, the Mercury Construction Project and processing of transuranic debris waste and are offset by the ramp-down of cleanup activities at East Tennessee Technology Park.
Right: The Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River site
22 | February 2025 |
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