Hanford Vitrification plant.jpg
Part 5 of 5 Parts (Please read Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 first)
Hanford experts at the Washington Department of Ecology (WDoE) said that they felt that a short-term delay to the WESF mission would not seriously increase any threat to the environment or workers. Alex Smith is the nuclear waste program manager at the WDoE. She said that “We don’t believe that there’s an immediate health risk from a slowdown of work.” She also said that as long as conditions are properly maintained in the cooling pool cells in the WESF, the capsules should not experience any significant aging or decay in the near-term. Smith believes that it still makes sense to transfer the capsules to reduce the risk of a serious nuclear disaster.
The WDoE says that the routine daily inspections of capsules of the cooling pool walls at the WESF haven’t shown any visible signs of degradation or spalling which is flaking that occurs because of moisture in concrete.
Hanford watchdog organizations feel that the possibility of any new delays compounds the seemingly endless nature of the environmental cleanup mission. Hanford shut down its last nuclear reactor in 1987. Ever since then, efforts to extract, treat, contain and demolish radioactive waste and buildings have proceeded in fits and starts with budgeting issues, technical hurdles and the occasional accident. There have been a few successes such as the removal of almost a thousand cubic feet of radioactive sludge near the Columbia River.
The design and construction of the glassification plant is an example of the problems that Hanford cleanup projects can face. “The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, known as the Vit Plant, is a facility for nuclear waste vitrification at the Hanford Site in Washington. The Vit Plant is designed to immobilize small quantities of high-level waste including plutonium. It was designed to be the world's largest vitrification plant.” Wikipedia
Construction of the Vit plant began in 2002 and was supposed to be complete by 2011 at a cost of four billion three hundred million dollars. One of the major problems that impeded that optimistic plan was the fact that the exact nature of the waste in the underground tanks was poorly understood. The fluids in the tanks varied in viscosity and composition. There were particulates of various sizes and compositions. Construction was begun before these problems were well defined.
Construction on the Vit had to halted and design reconsidered when the variable composition of the waste steam caused serious vibrations in the piping which could have led to ruptures, release of radioactive materials, release of hydrogen gas and explosions. It also turned out that the variable waste stream would require new recipes for the vitrification chemicals for each batch process, increasing complexity, time and cost. All of the issues at the Vit plant have resulted in the timeline to be revised for the plant to be fully operational by 2036. The cost has risen to seventeen billion dollars.
Dirk Dunning, the Oregon nuclear expert, says, “There are all these competing [cleanup projects], but the clock is running on all of them. And you don’t know when it’s going to run out.”