Progress Updates for the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant Project - 18327
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of River Protection (United States)
The Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) Project is vital to the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) mission to cleanup radioactive waste at the Hanford Site, located in southeastern Washington State. The overall WTP Project objective is to design, build, and commission the facilities and systems that will treat and immobilize approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in Hanford's 177 underground storage tanks. The combination of technologies in the WTP makes it a first-of-a-kind facility at a scale larger than ever, built for radioactive waste processing. DOE is proceeding with its approach to complete the WTP Project in phases, which includes the following principal actions: - Completing construction of the Low-Activity Waste (LAW) Facility, Balance of Facilities (BOF), and Analytical Laboratory (LAB) (collectively referred to as LBL); - Implementing a direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) process to treat low-activity waste independent of the Pretreatment (PT) Facility; - Resolving the technical issues associated with primarily the PT Facility; - Completing the design and construction of the High-Level Waste (HLW) and PT facilities to enable integrated WTP operations. In March 2016, a federal judge amended the 2010 Consent Decree 1 completion milestones for the Hanford WTP, which generally aligns with DOE's plans for completing the WTP facilities in sequence: - Complete LAW Facility hot commissioning: December 31, 2023; - Complete HLW Facility hot commissioning: December 31, 2033; - Complete PT Facility hot commissioning: December 31, 2033; - Achieve initial plant operations for the WTP: December 31, 2036. Having established milestones for completing the WTP facilities has enabled DOE to formally implement its plans for completing the WTP facilities in sequence, starting with the LAW Facility. In December 2016, DOE executed a contract modification and approved a change to the project's performance baseline to complete the LBL facilities and incorporate modifications needed to allow direct feed of low-activity waste to the LAW Facility. Significant progress has been made toward completing the design, construction, and planning for commissioning of the facilities needed to enable the DFLAW operations to commence as early as January 2022. In 2012, DOE partially suspended production work on the WTP's PT Facility and to a lesser degree the HLW Facility because of unresolved technical issues associated with those facilities. In September 2017, DOE acknowledged the WTP contractor had met all the criteria for full resumption of engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) activities for the HLW Facility. By December 2017, DOE had completed the actions needed to resolve the six of the eight primary technical issues associated with the PT Facility, with the remaining two issues expected to be resolved in the first quarter of 2018. Although significant progress has been made to prepare for resuming production activities for the HLW and PT facilities, DOE has made the decision to constrain EPC work on those facilities in the near term based on DOE's higher priority of completing the WTP facilities needed to begin DFLAW operations. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- WM Symposia, Inc., PO Box 27646, 85285-7646 Tempe, AZ (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22975466
- Report Number(s):
- INIS-US-20-WM-18327; TRN: US21V0280015508
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: WM2018: 44. Annual Waste Management Conference, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 18-22 Mar 2018; Other Information: Country of input: France; Available online at: https://www.xcdsystem.com/wmsym/2018/index.html
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
COMMISSIONING
CONSTRUCTION
DECONTAMINATION
DESIGN
HANFORD ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY
HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
LICENSES
LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTES
OPERATION
RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL
RADIOACTIVE WASTE FACILITIES
RADIOACTIVE WASTE PROCESSING
RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORAGE
REMEDIAL ACTION
TANKS
UNDERGROUND STORAGE
WASHINGTON