Hanford Waste Treatment Complex Foundation for Success

The mission of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection (ORP) River Protection Project (RPP) is to build and operate a Waste Treatment Complex to complete the cleanup of the Hanford Site's highly radioactive tank waste. As directed by Congress in Section 3139 of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, DOE established ORP at the Hanford Site in eastern Washington State to manage RPP (formerly the Tank Waste Remediation System). This is DOE's largest and most complex environmental cleanup project. ORP is responsible for safe storage, retrieval, treatment, and disposal of 53 million gallons of highly toxic, high-level radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks located within seven miles of the Columbia River. One hundred forty-nine of these tanks have a single steel liner inside the concrete tanks and are decades beyond their design life. Sixty-seven have leaked an estimated one million gallons of waste into the soil. Some of this waste has reached the groundwater, threatening the Columbia River. It is urgent that this waste be vitrified (turned to glass) and stored or disposed of in a more secure location before more leaks occur and before tanks and infrastructure deteriorate to the point where the cost and schedule for cleanup becomes prohibitive. This cleanup must occur in an environmentally sound, safe, and cost-efficient manner. The cleanup also must comply with the comprehensive cleanup and compliance agreement among DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington State Department of Ecology, signed on May 15, 1989. The Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order, or Tri-Party Agreement, is an agreement for achieving compliance with the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 remedial action provisions and with the Resource Conservation and Recover Act of 1976 treatment, storage, and disposal unit regulations and corrective action provisions. The RPP is managed as a single, integrated Waste Treatment Complex. A RPP management team consisting of ORP, Tank Farm Contractor (CH2M HILL Hanford Group, Inc.), and the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) Contractor (Bechtel Washington) execute the mission. The role each organization plays in laying out the foundations for success of the Waste Treatment Complex will be further identified in the paper