After 20+ years radioactive waste melting plant in Eastern WA takes key step forward
Glass has been melted inside the world’s largest radioactive waste melter at the Hanford nuclear reservation site for the first time, more than 20 years after construction on the vitrification plant began.
“This is a proud time for our Hanford team as we have established a molten glass pool in our first melter,” said Brian Vance, the Department of Energy Hanford manager.
Four melters are at the heart of the planned operations of the Waste Treatment Plant, or vitrification plant, to turn radioactive and chemical waste into a stable glass form for disposal.
A second attempt to heat up the first melter at the Hanford vitrification plant in Eastern Washington started six weeks ago.
The first attempt to start up the melter in October was shut down with the temperature not yet at 300 degrees when a problem was discovered with the power supply to the melter’s startup heaters. It left an inductor in its electrical system blackened from overheating.
After eight months of troubleshooting and revisions in melter systems to make sure that the melter would operate safely and efficiently, it was successfully heated to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit in late July. That’s the temperature needed to glassify radioactive waste.
Adding specially formulated glass beads, or frit, was the next step and last week the first batches of the frit were poured into the melter.
By the end of the weekend 19,000 pounds of frit, or about 65 bags, purchased from a Richland, Wash., company had been added to the melter.
“We’re pleased that melter commissioning has successfully progressed to this point,” said Ryan Miller, spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology, a regulator for the vit plant.
“We look forward to continued testing of the melter components toward cold commissioning in 2024, and ultimately achieving hot commissioning and vitrification of low-activity waste at Hanford,” he said,.
Construction began on the vitrification plant in 2002 and DOE and its contractor, Bechtel National, are planning to start treating some of the least radioactive waste stored in underground tanks by late 2024 or 2025.
The Hanford site in Eastern Washington produced nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
Production left 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste stored in underground tanks, some of them prone to leaking, until it could be treated for disposal.
Four Hanford melters planned
The vit plant’s Low Activity Waste Facility, which will glassify the least radioactive waste, will have two 300-ton melters.
The vit plant also is required to have its High Level Waste Facility treating the most radioactive waste by 2033. It will have two more melters.
Bechtel will continue to add frit to the initial melter started up at the Low Activity Waste Facility until the molten glass pool is about 31 inches deep. That will require a total of about 40,000 pounds of the glass beads.
The frit mimics waste by dissolving into a solid form at high temperatures and will be used only during the melter heatup.
During actual treatment of low activity waste, radioactive and chemical waste tank waste that has been pretreated, will be added to the melter and mixed with glass forming materials.
Solids, which are high level waste, have been filtered out of the waste, and radioactive cesium, which is a high level waste that is dissolved in liquid tank waste, has been removed with an ion exchange system during pretreatment.
The mixture in the melters will be heated to 2,100 degrees and then poured into stainless-steel containers for disposal at a lined landfill at Hanford, the Integrated Disposal Facility.
High level waste glassified at the vit plant’s High Level Waste Facility must be disposed of at a national repository, with no site yet identified after work at Yucca Mountain, Nev., was halted.
The frit that is being melted now comes from Fluid Controls and Components in Richland.
Richland frit supplier
It has produced 108,000 pounds of frit for Bechtel’s use at the vitrification plant.
Fluid Controls and Components already had provided valves, piping and piping components for construction of the vitrification plant and has received three Supply Chain Excellence Awards from Bechtel.
It has worked on Hanford projects since 2003, first as a startup and since 2020 as part of the Dupill Group. Its work for Bechtel also has included work toward military chemical agent destruction and for NASA’s mission to send astronauts to the moon.
But making frit was new to the company’s 15 employees.
“The chemistry and physical profile of the frit were very complex,” said Russ Watson, vice president of Fluid Controls and Components.
The pieces of glass, each about the size of a grain of sand, had to be uniform in shape to prevent the frit from clumping together.
“The specifications were strict, and the monitoring process was extensive,” Watson said.
The company’s goal is to be the sole source provider for frit for the vitrification plant.
