The heat up of world’s largest radioactive waste melter at the Hanford site vitrification plant in Eastern Washington has not started as hoped.
The melter temperature was expected to climb to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit over about two weeks this month, but the heating was halted before 300 degrees was reached.
The Department of Energy’s Hanford manager Brian Vance made the announcement at a Wednesday evening meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board.
When heating of the melter was started it was not expected to be turned off over the
next five years to avoid damaging melter components.
The plan was to run it continuously and also bring a second melter online that would both be used to commission the plant with a nonradioactive waste simulant and then to start treating radioactive waste as soon as the end of next year.
But the melter temperature has now been allowed to cool to the ambient temperature while troubleshooting is done on the electrical system, Vance said.
The cool down has not damaged the melter, he said.
The melter was still empty, with no materials to practice glassifying waste added, when the decision was made to stop the heating and slowly bring the temperature down over a
couple of days.
LEAST RADIOACTIVE WASTE FIRST
Construction began 20 years ago on the Waste Treatment Plant, or vitrification plant, with heat up of the first melter at the plant this month a crucial step toward a goal of starting to
glassify radioactive waste for permanent disposal.
The Hanford nuclear reservation adjoining Richland, Wash., was used during World War II and the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons
program.
Uranium fuel irradiated at Hanford’s nine
reactors was reprocessed at the site to chemically remove plutonium from the metal, leaving 56 million gallons of radioactive and other hazardous chemical waste stored in underground tanks.
Although the plant was initially planned to start treating all tank waste simultaneously, plans changed when technical issues were raised in 2012 concerning how the plant handles the most radioactive components in the waste.
Most construction on parts of the plant that will handle high level waste has been stalled since then and talks are underway between the federal and Washington state officials on
how to treat the worst of the tank waste.
Initially,
the vitrification plant will only treat some of the least radioactive tank waste, called low activity or low level waste.
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