NON-NDAA Waste Incidental to Reprocessing Evaluation for the 200 West Area Tank Treatment Mission (WATT) at the Hanford Site, Washington

Hanford 200 West Area Tank Treatment Mission (WATT)

Operator: U.S. Department of Energy Docket Number: PROJ0736 Tank Description:  Waste Volume:

For WIR not covered under the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005 (i.e., non-NDAA WIR), the role of the NRC is: if requested by the DOE through an Interagency Agreement (i.e., the DOE funds the NRC), then the DOE will consult with the NRC and the NRC will provide a technical review evaluating the DOE documents describing how the DOE proposes to close the tank farms at the Hanford Site (HANF).

In accordance with the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (Tri Party Agreement) and State-approved closure plans, tanks in those HANF tank farms will be closed in coordination with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Washington Department of Ecology. Note that the NRC is not a party to the Tri Party Agreement. HANF, occupying approximately 1,518 square kilometers (km2) (586 square miles (mi2)) along the Columbia River near Richland, Washington, is a former federal government plutonium production complex. The cleanup of HANF involves more than 2.0x108 liters (5.3x107 gallons) of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste in 177 underground storage tanks, with approximately 750K cubic meters (m3) (25 million cubic feet (ft3)) of buried or stored solid waste, spent nuclear fuel, and plutonium in various forms.

This Draft WIR Evaluation concerns separated, pretreated, and solidified waste to be retrieved primarily from underground SSTs located in the S, SX, and U Tank Farms at the Hanford Site, in the State of Washington. The waste also includes some of the waste currently stored in DSTs in the SY Tank Farm, which will be removed to provide tank space for pretreatment operations. This Draft WIR Evaluation assesses whether this waste (from both the SSTs and the DSTs) is incidental to the reprocessing of SNF, is not HLW, and may be managed as LLW, under the criteria in Chapter II.B.(2)(a) of DOE M 435.1-1.

Major Non-NDAA WIR Consultation Documents for the HANF:

Current NRC Project Manager: Maurice Heath, 301-415-3137, Maurice.Heath@nrc.gov