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.