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Challenges
Nowhere in the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear complex is cleaning up the legacy of Cold War plutonium production more challenging than at the Hanford Site in south-central Washington State. Here, in 177 huge underground storage tanks dating from the early days of the Manhattan Project to near the end of the Cold War, is the waste from reprocessing 120,000 tons of irradiated uranium. Hanford’s tanks contain nearly 200 million curies of radioactivity, as well as a complex mixture of hazardous chemicals. Safely managing and retrieving the tank waste to prepare it for disposal is the job of Washington River Protection Solutions.
Environmental cleanup formally began at Hanford in 1989. Hanford’s tanks hold 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive and hazardous waste, the legacy of decades of plutonium production for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The waste is a complex mixture of radioactive materials and chemical waste. No two tanks contain exactly the same kind of waste and the waste itself is not homogenous.
Multiple fuel reprocessing methods were used at Hanford to improve efficiency, recover valuable materials and protect tanks from degradation. Because the waste coming from the processing plants was highly acidic it had to be treated to prevent corrosion. This was achieved with the addition of large quantities of sodium hydroxide and other chemicals to turn the waste alkaline. Campaigns were also conducted to recover uranium from the waste and return the material to the fuel cycle. In addition, chemical processes were developed to remove both strontium and cesium from the tanks, which created additional waste forms. The chemistry of these multiple waste forms was further altered by mixing waste between tanks, plus changes resulting from chemicals being exposed to radioactive materials.
