After years of delays, the U.S. Department of Energy is finally set to start processing radioactive waste at the Hanford site in southeast Washington. NWPB's senior correspondent Anna King has been covering Hanford for nearly two decades and spoke with host Phineas Pope.
Phineas Pope: For a minute, it looked like the plant wouldn't go live. What happened over the last month to get the state of Washington and federal agencies on the same page? It wasn't always clear.
Anna King: Exactly. Washington's senior Sen. Patty Murray sounded the alarm a couple of weeks ago, and she said the head of the federal Energy department was casting doubt if the massive plant would ever go live.
This plant is supposed to treat 56 million gallons of radioactive waste. It's a really big deal. This waste is actually leaking into the ground and they're trying to arrest that so that they can get it cleaned up.
And if they had stopped the plant, that would've ended in a $30 billion boondoggle, according to Sen. Murray.
Both of Washington's U.S. senators spoke publicly about their alarm over this. This is Sen. Maria Cantwell on the Senate floor.
Sen. Maria Cantwell: I know that we must continue our obligations at the facility. I know that we can't walk away from this commitment. I know that the vitrification process has been proven scientifically, and unless there is a problem at this plant, we need to move forward with the production that people have been counting on for years.
King: Washington's governor (Bob Ferguson) was threatening legal action in a press conference in the Tri-Cities on Sept. 12, but then the Energy department seemed to change course and say the plant was all going to be OK. In written statements that were online, it said they're going forward.
Pope: OK. And this plant is going to use vitrification as the method for cleanup. What's that process going to look like at Hanford?
King: Vitrification means to bind up in glass. Basically, this plant is a big factory and it's meant to bind up radioactive waste into more stable glass logs so that the waste can escape and move around in the environment.
The plant will work roughly like this — it's going to pump the low level waste from underground tanks in piping under the ground, to the waste treatment plant.
The waste has already been filtered a bit, removing the cesium near the tanks, and then the waste will be tested by a big massive lab, and they will formulate the right mix of chemicals and glass materials to add in, and then they'll heat and stir up the goo in a massive melter.
The waste will be poured into stainless steel canisters, then it'll cool. It'll be put on a conveyor belt and then loaded on a truck which will transport it to a repository at Hanford, where it's slated to live forever.
Pope: And 56 million gallons of waste. How long is that going to take to dispose of?
King: It's all gonna take about 40 years, Finn.
Pope: And the legally required deadline to start processing this waste is Oct. 15. What are we expecting to see by that deadline or before?
King: By Oct. 15, we should see some deadline announcement by the Department of Energy saying we have vitrified waste and there's probably going to be a press rollout, but nothing's for sure yet.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
