With work finished in April on a major support facility, the $12.2-billion waste vitrification complex at the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington state is nearly 60% complete and on track to meet its mandated 2019 operating deadline, officials say.
The Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is intended to turn the site’s 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive and chemical wastes left from past decades of nuclear weapon production into vitrified glass logs. The wastes now are stored in aging underground tanks, many of which have already leaked or are in danger of doing so.