After a design and construction investment of more than 20 years and $30 billion, the US. The Department of Energy and its contractor Bechtel National officially broke ground on Oct. 15 for the newly built industrial plant at the giant former federal nuclear weapons production facility at Hanford in Washington state to convert long-stored radioactive waste into vitrified glass for safer long-term storage.
The milestone announcement came on the same day that a long-standing federal-state consent decree had ordered the vitrification process for millions of gallons of low-level nuclear and hazardous waste originally stored in 177 underground tanks since World War II.
The first batch of stable vitrified glass is being produced at the Hanford site’s waste immobilization and treatment plant, called the Vit Plant, and the low-level direct feed waste facility, where the waste is mixed with glass-forming materials and heated to 2,100°F in one of two 300-ton furnaces before being dumped into another stainless container and dumped for a long time to another container. the 580 square mile place.
The vitrification plant will operate 24 hours a day. A Bechtel spokesman said ENR the current federal government shutdown is not affecting operations.
Bechtel National designed and built the plant, calling it the world’s largest radioactive waste treatment facility. “This milestone represents the realization of a vision … to solve one of the nation’s most complex environmental challenges safely and permanently,” Dena Volovar, president of Bechtel’s nuclear, safety and environmental business, said in a statement.
Bechtel plans to continue feeding waste and glass-forming materials to the smelters, filling steel containers with vitrified waste to be transported to the on-site disposal facility. The company expects to process an average of 5,300 gallons of tank waste per day. An Oct. 9 waste transfer brought 25,000 gallons to the vitrification facility.
The annual federal budget across the board is approximately $3 billion.
“This achievement allows us to shift focus to safely operating the plant,” said DOE Hanford Site Manager Ray Geimer, adding that the focus now shifts to safely operating the facility while advancing work to operate its direct feed treatment approach for high-level waste.
“It’s pretty incredible to see this first-of-its-kind plant come online,” Casey Sixkiller, director of the state Department of Ecology, the regulatory oversight agency for the entire process for more than two decades, said in a statement. So far, the state Department of Health has issued eight radioactive air emissions licenses to ensure the plant’s operations meet all health and safety standards.
In the next 18 months. Finally, Bechtel will transfer plant operation and waste disposal to a new contractor, Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C). It is a joint venture of prime contractors BWX Technologies Inc., Amentum and Fluor Corp., with subcontractors dss+, DBD Inc., Longenecker and Associates Inc. and ENTIRE.[osaltoanewcontractorHanfordTankWasteOperations&Closure(H2C)ItisajointventureofprimecontractorsBWXTechnologiesIncAmentumandFluorCorpwithteamingsubcontractorsdss+DBDIncLongeneckerandAssociatesIncandINTERA[osaltoanewcontractorHanfordTankWasteOperations&Closure(H2C)ItisajointventureofprimecontractorsBWXTechnologiesIncAmentumandFluorCorpwithteamingsubcontractorsdss+DBDIncLongeneckerandAssociatesIncandINTERA
The state said it will continue oversight as the process moves toward full operation, with the goal of issuing a final permit for the decades it will take to treat all of Hanford’s tank waste.
“It’s hard to overstate the importance of this milestone in the Hanford cleanup effort,” Gov. Bob Ferguson said in a statement.
