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2 Hanford tanks are leaking nuclear waste into the ground. Plan to deal with them settled

By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
Published: May 12, 2023, 7:41am

KENNEWICK — Two options that might speed up removal of radioactive waste from leaking underground storage tanks at Hanford will be evaluated, according to the terms of a settlement agreement reached Wednesday.

The Department of Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator, reached agreement in August on the approach to waste leaking from Hanford’s tanks.

The tanks store a mix of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste until the mix can be treated for permanent disposal.

Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group based in Seattle, appealed the federal and state agreement to Washington state’s Pollution Control Hearings Board.

“This is terrific news for taking action to stop the leak from (Tank) B-109,” said Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest.

Tank B-109 is one of two aging tanks confirmed to be leaking waste into the soil above groundwater that moves toward the Columbia River.

“The tank has been leaking for four years,” Pollet said. “And our settlement ensures that there will be a thorough evaluation of whether there is equipment available for readily available processes to remove the leakable liquids and stop the leakage instead of waiting decades while the tank keeps leaking.”

The Department of Ecology says the settlement agreement reached in the appeal Wednesday does not change the earlier agreed order between DOE and the state, which outlined a path for responding to leaks from two Hanford tanks and created plans on how to respond to any potential future leaks.

Instead, the appeal settlement makes clear the requirements in the federal-state agreement, the Department of Ecology said.

Under the agreed order reached in August, DOE was not required to immediately begin emptying waste from two single-shell tanks known to be leaking waste into the ground beneath them.

Instead, the agreed order called for DOE to take steps to limit the spread of the waste and consider ways to revise its tank waste retrieval schedule to possibly empty the waste from the two tanks sooner.

DOE, as required by the August agreed order, also is developing Hanford’s first comprehensive plan for responding to any more leaks discovered form Hanford’s 149 single shell tanks.

The federal and state agreement was reached after more than a year’s negotiation between DOE and Ecology after Tank B-109 was discovered to be leaking. That followed DOE’s announcement a decade ago that Tank T-111 was leaking.

The 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington adjacent to Richland was used to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.

Plutonium was chemically separated from uranium irradiated in Hanford reactors, with 56 million gallons of waste from that process stored in underground tanks, some built during WWII. Work is underway to transfer waste from the oldest 149 single-shell tanks to 27 newer double shell tanks.

Options for leaking tanks

As DOE looks at ways to retrieve waste from the two leaking tanks sooner, the settlement of the appeal now requires it to consider two specific technologies.

Pollet said he does not think federal officials have taken a serious look at the two technologies, based on information he has received through public records requests.

Under the appeal’s settlement agreement, DOE must evaluate enhanced salt-well pumping, a technology to remove liquid waste caught up within the solids of the tank.

All single-shell tanks had pumpable liquids removed between the 1990s to about 2005 to limit leaking and protect groundwater.

In the past, as many as 67 single-shell tanks were suspected of leaking or spilling waste in the the ground.

Improvements in technology might allow salt-well pumping to remove more of the liquid waste in pockets within solid waste, which includes sludge with the consistency of peanut butter and hard salt cake.

The second technology that the appeal settlement requires is an in-tank pretreatment system.

DOE already is planning to use an in-tank pretreatment system in another project to remove some tank waste for a test of turning it into a concrete-like grout for disposal out-of-state.

In that project, a waste pretreatment system will be inserted into a double-shell tank. It will use an ion exchange column to remove cesium and strontium, which are not low level wastes, from liquid waste in the tank and also use filtration to separate large undissolved solids that may be high level waste.

The evaluation of speeding up leaking tank retrieval will also consider the disposal pathway for the liquid waste removed from leaking tanks, specifically looking at trucking removed liquid waste to a double-shell tank or a treatment plant, according to the appeal settlement.

The waste could be grouted and sent out of state for disposal.

PNNL to review evaluation

The appeal settlement also calls for a third-party review of the evaluation of options from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

will hold a technical workshop on the evaluation with PNNL experts and an expert picked by Heart of America Northwest.

The appeal settlement also calls for clarifications on the Washington Department of Ecology website to distinguish the existing leak detection and monitoring program for the leaking tanks from that required by the federal-state agreed order.

Tank B-109 holds about 123,000 gallons of waste, about 13,000 of it liquid, and has been estimated to be leaking about 560 gallons of waste per year.

Tank T-111 holds about 397,000 gallons of waste, about 37,000 gallons of it liquid, and has been estimated to be leaking about 300 gallons per year.

David Bowen, the Department of Ecology’s nuclear waste program manager, said that work has continued to implement the federal-state order as the appeal to the Pollution Control Hearings Board was settled.

“And we’re glad we can continue that momentum,” he said.

There will be opportunities for the public to review plans and comment, according to the Department of Ecology.

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