The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, known as the Vit Plant, will process the nuclear waste at the Hanford Site in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

into a solid glass form using

vitrification Vitrification (from Latin ''vitreum'', "glass" via French ''vitrifier'') is the full or partial transformation of a substance into a glass, that is to say, a non-crystalline amorphous solid. Glasses differ from liquids structurally and glasses po ...

. A proven technology that has been used at the Savannah River Site and

West Valley Demonstration Project The West Valley Demonstration Project is a nuclear waste remediation site in West Valley, New York in the U.S. state of New York. The project focuses on the cleanup and containment of radioactive waste left behind after the abandonment of a com ...

, vitrification involves mixing the waste with glass-forming chemicals, heating it to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,149 degrees Celsius), and pouring it into stainless steel containers to solidify. The Vit Plant will first process Hanford's low-activity waste liquids, starting as soon as 2023, as part of the Department of Energy's Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) approach. Under DFLAW, waste will be sent from the tank farms to the Vit Plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility for vitrification. High-level waste will be processed and vitrified later in a separate process. The Hanford Site is currently storing 56 million gallons of

radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...

in aging underground tanks, legacy waste from plutonium production efforts during World War II and the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

. The majority of the waste in the tanks is low-activity waste liquids. Prime contractor Bechtel National, Inc., is designing, building, and commissioning the plant with subcontractor AECOM for the

U.S. Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United States. ...

. According to a 2012

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report, several technical challenges remained, including how to keep radioactive waste from incurring a criticality accident and exploding before it was vitrified. As of 2017, the project was undergoing "ongoing" reviews by the Government Accounting Office, Office of Inspector General, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and other agencies, with a re-baselined projected cost of $16.813 billion and completion date in 2023. In 2019, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board concurred with the Department of Energy that the technical challenges had been resolved.

Location

The plant is in Hanford Site's 200 area ().

References

External links

*{{official website, http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/ORP/WasteTreatmentPlant (United States Department of Energy) *http://www.hanfordvitplant.com/ (Bechtel) Bechtel Hanford Site Radioactive waste repositories in the United States