Workers have finished removing radioactive waste from the 21st large underground storage tank as part of the massive cleanup of the Hanford Site in southeast Washington state.
Office of Environmental Management
July 2, 2024
minute read time
By June 2024, workers had removed about 346,000 gallons of radiological and chemical waste from AX-101, completing retrieval of the Hanford Site’s second tank farm, or group of underground storage tanks.
RICHLAND, Wash. — Workers have finished removing radioactive waste from the 21st large underground storage tank as part of the massive cleanup of the Hanford Site in southeast Washington state.
Tank AX-101 is also the last of four emptied in a group of tanks, called the AX Farm. Waste removed from the 21 tanks totals about 3 million gallons.
“This is another important moment in our Hanford cleanup work,” said Brian Vance, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s (EM) 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.”
A photo from inside AX-101 before retrieval activities started in January 2023 shows radiological and chemical waste in the tank and collected on walls and other in-tank equipment.
Preparations, like installing equipment into the tank to mobilize waste, are nearly complete to allow retrieval of radiological and chemical waste from A Farm, the site’s third tank farm, to begin this month.
From 1944 to 1989, Hanford produced 74 tons of plutonium for the country’s nuclear weapons program. To store the radioactive and chemical byproducts, the site built thick, reinforced concrete tanks lined inside with steel and buried under several feet of soil to shield workers from radiation. The tanks held up to a million gallons each, and when production stopped at the end of the Cold War, 56 million gallons of waste was in 177 of the large tanks.
EM and its contractors are moving the waste out of the older tanks with a single steel liner into newer tanks that have a second liner for leak protection. Those tanks will feed the waste to the nearby Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant that will treat the waste for safe disposal starting next year.
To empty the 21st tank, contractor Washington River Protection Solutions, supported by other Hanford contractors, removed about 350,000 gallons of waste from the million-gallon single shell Tank AX-101.
Workers use remote-operated equipment to mobilize waste and direct it toward a pump for transfer to a double-shell tank for eventual pretreatment and vitrification.
“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, EM 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.”
“The retrieval teams are successful because they have taken ownership of the work and our risk-reduction mission,” said Peggy Hamilton, Retrievals manager for Washington River Protection Solutions. “We continue to make great progress in retrieving tank waste because the teams are dedicated to working safely, efficiently and keeping up their skills through continuous training.”
View a video of workers talking about this achievement here.
Hanford workers won’t stop at 21. They will start removing waste from the 22nd tank later this month.
To receive the latest news and updates about the Office of Environmental Management, submit your e-mail address.