RICHLAND, Wash. — Workers at the Hanford Site have successfully removed radioactive waste from the 21st large underground storage tank, marking a significant milestone in the extensive cleanup project in southeast Washington.
Tank AX-101, the last of four tanks emptied in the AX Farm group, contained approximately 350,000 gallons of waste, bringing the total amount of radioactive waste removed to about 3 million gallons.
“This is another important moment in our Hanford cleanup work,” said Brian Vance, the Department of Energy’s top manager at Hanford. “Safely and efficiently transferring waste from older to newer tanks continues to reduce risks to our workforce and our community as we progress our cleanup mission on behalf of the nation’s taxpayers.”
From 1944 to 1989, Hanford produced 74 tons of plutonium for the country’s nuclear weapons program.
The site used thick, reinforced concrete tanks lined with steel and buried under several feet of soil to store the radioactive and chemical byproducts.
Each tank held up to a million gallons. By the end of the Cold War, 56 million gallons of waste were stored in 177 of these large tanks.
The Department of Energy and its contractors are transferring the waste from older tanks with a single steel liner to newer tanks with a second liner for leak protection.
These newer tanks will feed the waste to the nearby waste treatment plant, which will begin treating the waste for safe disposal next year.
“The work is some of the most challenging and complex in the Department’s mission to clean up sites across the country that supported our national security objectives from World War II to the end of the Cold War,” said Delmar Noyes, DOE Hanford assistant manager for Tank Waste Operations. “Hanford teams removing the waste are meticulous in managing radiological, chemical, and industrial hazards while progressing our cleanup mission.”
Hanford workers plan to start removing waste from a 22nd tank later this month.
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