RETRIEVING AND DISPOSING OF HANFORD'S HIGH-LEVEL WASTE

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to retrieve, treat, immobilize, and dispose of 200,000 m 3 (53 million gal) of high-level waste (HLW) that has accumulated in large underground tanks at the Hanford site since 1944. Treatment and immobilization will be performed by a privatized contractor in privately owned facilities to be constructed at Hanford, while waste retrieval and immobilized product storage and disposal will be performed in government-owned facilities. Current plans are for processing approximately 10% of the waste in an initial demonstration phase (Phase I) from about 2007 to 2018. The remaining waste will be processed in Phase II. The DOE Office of River Protection (ORP) at Hanford was created to implement tank cleanup and is moving forward with this project. Two major activities are (a) waste retrieval and final clean out of the Hanford tanks and (b) storage and disposal of immobilized high-level waste (IHLW) and immobilized low-activity waste (ILAW).