KENNEWICK — The Department of Energy is on track to start treating radioactive waste at the massive Hanford vitrification plant in less than a year, says the new DOE head of environmental cleanup.
Candice Robertson, who became senior adviser for environmental management in mid June, spent Thursday and Friday in Richland and at the Hanford site, where about 13,000 people work.
She met with local government leaders, the Tri-City Development Council, Hanford DOE and contractor leaders and tribal leaders; talked with the Tri-City Herald and toured the Hanford site to see progress in environmental cleanup.
She said DOE is on a good trajectory at Hanford and she will watch for opportunities for improvement, but plans no radical changes.
The focus by DOE in Washington D.C., will be on moving forward with current plans rather than new initiatives that could distract from steady progress on DOE cleanup, she said.
Hanford field offices change
Her visit marked the end of two Hanford field offices in Richland, the Office of River Protection and the Richland Operations Office.
On Tuesday Oct. 1, federal legislation sponsored by former Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., expires and the offices are combining.
Hastings worked to split Hanford work under two offices by creating the Office of River Protection in 1998 to bring focused attention to one of Hanford’s most complex issues — 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks, many of them prone to leaking, and the massive vitrification plant being built to turn much of the waste into a stable glass form for disposal.
The waste, plus extensive radioactive and hazardous chemical contamination, is left from the production of nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
DOE now is on track to start treating some of the least radioactive tank waste at the vitrification plant by a court-ordered deadline in August 2025, Robertson said.
Construction on the plant in central Hanford began in 2002.
DOE also is on track to meet a deadline at the end of next month to start cold commissioning of the plant, Robertson said. A nonradioactive simulant of tank waste will be used to demonstrate and practice incorporating it into a glass form before radioactive waste is introduced into the plant.
Starting to treat radioactive waste at the plant is a high priority of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Robertson meets weekly with Hanford officials for updates on progress and any potential issues for the project, Robertson said.
Although vitrification has been done on radioactive waste elsewhere, Hanford waste was produced by multiple chemical processes that makes its glassification more challenging.
Until recently Washington state Congressional leaders had resisted returning to a single DOE field office at Hanford, both because of the scope of environmental cleanup at the 580-square-mile site and the cost.
Maintaining two offices with separate environmental cleanup responsibilities helped Washington state’s congressional delegation as it asked for a Hanford budget that exceeded that for any other DOE cleanup project.
Since fiscal 2022 funding for both Hanford offices combined has increased from $2.7 billion in fiscal 2022 to $3 billion now, which still is not enough to meet legal obligations in a federal court consent decree and the Tri-Party Agreement.
Even though the two offices are being combined, DOE will submit separate budget requests for each to make sure the work under each office now is funded without the offices vying against each other, Robertson said.
Having two Hanford offices made sense in 1998 when a dedicated focus was needed on tank waste, but now Hanford is close to starting to treat tank waste for disposal, which will allow aging single shell tanks to be emptied, Robertson said.
DOE also has demonstrated it can operate under the combined office and that there are advantages through better integration of work since Brian Vance was named the overall DOE Hanford manager, overseeing work by both offices, in 2019, she said.
Hanford cleanup budgets, progress
As the Hanford site budget has grown to $3 billion, much of the growth has been for the tank waste that was under the Office of River Protection, Robertson said.
Not only is DOE close to start treating low activity radioactive waste now in underground tanks, but it also is gearing up for the next phase at the vitrification plant, treating the high level radioactive portion of the tank waste. It has a court ordered deadline of 2033 to start treating the more radioactive waste.
“We are going to start seeing more return on investment in terms of treating that waste, removing that waste, getting waste into a final form,” Robertson said.
That addresses risk from leaking and potentially leaking tanks, and also cleanup progress helps keep down costs that eat up money for environmental cleanup to keep the site safe and continue basic operations, she said.
“The additional funding that we have seen from Congress and from across presidential administrations both here at Hanford and across the EM (Environmental Management) complex is what’s enabling that progress and driving down and at least forestalling major increases in our environmental liability so we can put those dollars to work,” she said.
Robertson’s community experience
Robertson replaced Ike White as senior adviser for environmental management. He held the position from 2019 until he was nominated in June to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
She comes to the environmental cleanup leadership job with 20 years of radioactive waste management experience, including being assigned to Hanford for several months as a DOE Headquarters official.
More than a decade of her work was in senior executive roles at DOE and the NRC. They include serving as senior policy adviser for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, leading recent efforts to use DOE land for clean energy projects.
A gigawatt-scale project on up to 8,000 acres of unused nuclear reservation land is proposed near the southeast edge of the Hanford site.
She also understands what it’s like to work with DOE after serving as a county commissioner in Nye County, Nev., home to the once proposed Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository.
As a county commissioner, Robertson became familiar with nuclear waste issues and also worked with tribes there.
One of the reasons she likes working for the DOE Office of Environmental Management is its community-centered mission, she said.
“We are doing this cleanup to restore lands for beneficial reuse for communities and tribes and everyone who has supported our critical national security and research missions over many years,” she said.
