Spokane — Some 2,000 gallons of low-level, liquid radioactive waste are set to be shipped from the Hanford Site in Richland next year, and they might be passing through Spokane.
Part of a $17 million United States Department of Energy project called the “Test Bed Initiative,” the pretreated waste is to be transported as a liquid from the Hanford site to disposal facilities in Utah and Texas. Once in these locations, the waste will be further processed in grout and disposed of in a way that does not pose a risk to any groundwater systems — as the waste does to the Columbia River.
The project has been in the works for years. In 2017, three gallons of waste were treated and grouted in Richland before being sent to Texas. Edward Dawson, Hanford Site spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy, said that following the 2017 success, the department plans to attempt transferring a higher volume of waste as a liquid.
“Now, we’re enlarging it to a 2,000-gallon demonstration project to show that we can do this on a larger scale,” he said.
For treatment prior to transport, radioactive “sludge” will be filtered from Hanford’s SY-101 tank to remove certain radioactive elements — largely cesium isotopes. Though a number of different vehicles have been proposed to carry the waste, Dawson said that “the TBI shipments would maximize use of the federal interstate highway system.”
While everyone who spoke to The Spokesman-Review agreed that removing the waste from the Hanford site was a step forward in the cleanup efforts, many expressed concerns about transporting the radioactive material in a liquid form. Gerry Pollet, the longtime director of the Hanford cleanup watchdog organization Heart of America Northwest, was among them.
“Moving waste to be disposed in a place like Texas where there is no ground water to be contaminated would be a great opportunity,” Pollet said. “But we should be making sure that the waste is shipped as a treated solid, and we are very concerned that the waste will be — the first test of 2,000 gallons is being shipped as a liquid.”
The state of Oregon shared similar concerns in a public meeting on Aug. 27, specifically stating that it believes waste should be solidified before transportation, emergency responders along the transport route should be trained in case of an accident and that an Environmental Impact Statement addressing the potential impacts of transporting liquid should be completed.
“I, representing Oregon, do not think it’s a good idea to ship liquid radioactive waste across our roads,” said Maxwell Woods, assistant director for nuclear safety in the Oregon Department of Energy. “I think it’s riskier, and I think there’s better ways to ship waste off site.”
The U.S. Department of Energy wrote in a statement that it is not required to prepare an environmental statement, citing that “the proposed action will not constitute a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment within the meaning of (the National Environmental Policy Act).”
“There’s no reason” why the U.S. Department of Energy can’t solidify the wastes at Hanford before transporting it, Woods said.
“They’d have to build a grout factory, I understand that,” he said. “But risk reduction and safety for communities would benefit from having the waste, and the environment would benefit from having the waste, be shipped in a solid form and not a liquid form, in my opinion. And Oregon’s Gov. (Tina) Kotek is on board with this.”
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation also wrote in a statement that transporting waste in a liquid form “poses an unacceptable risk of spills and harm to the environment.”
“Although the Test Bed Initiative is a relatively small (up to 2,000 gallons) demonstration project, it lays a foundational roadmap for millions of gallons of hazardous waste to be transported across the Columbia Basin, and therefore has long-term implications for treaty-reserved resources, cultural resources, First Foods, and human health and safety,” the statement said.
Following Oregon’s and the CTUIR’s concerns, the proposed route from Hanford to Utah and Texas was shifted to go up through Spokane, according to Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown, County Commissioner Amber Waldref and Pollet.
“I am extremely disappointed to learn that, following the expression of serious concerns by our friends from the state of Oregon and the CTUIR, your agencies shifted your planned route to go through Spokane,” Brown wrote in a letter to the state. “This plan poses an unacceptable risk to our city, as both rail and truck traffic passes through the heart of downtown Spokane over high bridges and elevated viaducts.”
Though the transportation route has not been decided Dawson confirmed that going up through Spokane and down through Idaho is an option being considered.
Waldref, who has been involved with Heart of America Northwest along with Pollet for around 20 years, was the one who informed Brown of the test project. She said that it is important for Washington state to communicate initiatives like this one to local elected officials.
“They can’t step back and say, ‘Well, DOE is going to do what they’re going to do.’ No — it’s our state, and if they’re going to ship it through our state, we should have some standards of how the state needs to weigh in and engage communities along the route and make sure folks’ health and safety are protected,” Waldref said.
Some of the communities along I-90 fall within Waldref’s commissioner district — something that she said makes her “particularly sensitive” to the possibility of radioactive waste passing through Spokane.
“There’s a lot of disproportionate impact on the I-90 communities that live along the freeway,” she said. Due to the new Healthy Environment for All Act, “When you’re making plans in Washington state that might have an environmental impact, it’s really important that we’re considering the impacts on those communities.”
Washington nuclear waste program spokesman for the Department of Ecology Ryan Miller said that there was a public meeting before the energy department was issued a one-year permit.
“The state — we did our role on this,” Miller said. “We worked with the Department of Energy closely on the permit. We did a public process where we had a public meeting and heard from the public, and then we responded to public comments, and the permit was issued back in July.”
In response to questions about safety, Dawson said that while the U.S. Department of Energy understands why people are concerned, “the bottom line is that we’re doing this in a safe way.”
“We feel that we’ve been compliant, we’ve done what we’ve needed to do to make this as safe as possible,” Dawson said. “We’ve done the studies, we’re complying with the transportation department’s regulations for shipping radioactive chemicals — even though it’s going to be very, very low level.”
Should the 2,000-gallon transport and treatment test be successful, the Department of Energy wrote in a fact sheet that the “implementation of this technology on an industrial scale may have the potential to safely pretreat low-activity waste from Hanford tanks, solidify the waste in grout and dispose of it offsite in a manner that would reduce risks to workers, the public and the environment.”
“We’re going to assess every facet of both the three-gallon demonstration and the 2,000-gallon demonstration,” Dawson said. “And that’ll just better inform the decisions moving forward.”
Treatment of the waste is slated to begin by the end of this year, with the test vehicles being sent out at some point next year. There have not been any decisions made about continuing to transport liquid waste following the Test Bed Initiative; however, many remain worried about the possibility that millions more gallons of waste will be routed through their cities in the future.
“Removing it from Hanford is a huge victory,” Waldref said. “But I think we just need to do it right, and we need to engage people and use this opportunity to really make sure we’re doing it right, and we’re protecting folks as it leaves the site.”
