Money questions for new Hanford facility

RICHLAND — State officials support the idea of a proposed new facility that would allow Hanford’s vitrification plant to start treating some radioactive waste at the country’s most contaminated nuclear site sooner, but worry about how the federal government will pay for the facility.

The Tri-City Herald reports the proposed Low-Activity Waste Pretreatment System – LAWPS – would prepare some low-activity waste now held in underground tanks to be treated at the vitrification plant. The waste could then bypass the plant’s Pretreatment Facility, where construction has been halted until technical issues are solved.

“We are all about getting waste into glass as soon as possible,” Suzanne Dahl, the manager of the state Department of Ecology’s tank waste treatment section, said at a recent committee meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board.

But she said the state also has some concerns about where money for the project will come from and at what expense to other Hanford projects.

Hanford was created by the Manhattan Project during World War II in the race to build an atomic bomb. The sprawling complex near Washington’s Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco is involved in a multi-decade cleanup program that already has cost more than $40 billion.

The vitrification plant is being built to turn up to 56 million gallons of radioactive waste held in underground tanks into a stable glass form for disposal. The waste is left from making plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

The full vitrification plant might not be operating until 2031. But by building LAWPS, the Department of Energy could start treating low-activity waste in 2022.

The estimated cost is between $243 million and $375 million, which includes money for contingencies, said Steve Pfaff, DOE project director.