WASHINGTON, D.C.—The United States Department of Energy (DOE) formally approved the continuation of the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste Program (DFLAW) at the Hanford vitrification plant in south-central Washington to clean up nuclear waste. News comes after weeks of alarming signals from the Trump administration indicating they might delay the scheduled October 15 start of DFLAW which would put at risk thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments.
DFLAW is an assembly of highly interdependent projects and infrastructure improvements, managed as a program, that will operate together to vitrify and dispose of low-activity waste. The “direct-feed” portion refers to the waste being separated to remove the more radioactive portion so that the resulting low-activity (less radioactive) waste can be fed directly to the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility for vitrification (immobilization in glass).
U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released the following statement:
“The Department of Energy heard our history lesson and made the right decision to protect 3,000 jobs and support the over 20-year, $24 billion investment we made to protect the Columbia River and Tri-Cities community from radioactive tank waste. I look forward to October 15th when tank waste will be removed, treated, and safely stored for disposal for the first time in the decades-long effort to clean up Hanford.”
Earlier this month, DOE announced the firing of Roger Jarrell, principal deputy assistant secretary of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the main overseer of the Hanford nuclear site in the Tri-Cities.
Following that news, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) announced that she’d spoken to Wright and found out he intends to stall on beginning hot commissioning at the Waste Treatment Plant, a decision Sen. Murray called “astonishingly senseless.”
Gov. Bob Ferguson, in a written statement to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) on Thursday, September 11, said that if DOE backed away from its glassification plans at Hanford, he “will be challenging this decision. There’s too much at stake for the people of Washington and our environment.”
That waste at Hanford is stored in 177 leak-prone underground tanks, according to OPB that are at risk of leaking into the Columbia River.
Author: Mario Lotmore
