Another Hanford Tank Emptied, 41K Gallons of Waste Transferred

When the Manhattan Project and following nuclear programs at Hanford generated large amounts of  radioactive waste, they had to store it somewhere.

   Another of the Old Single-Shell Tanks is Emptied

Tank A 102 is one of the older, single-shell tanks that worried cleanup experts the most. Hanford, all told, generated at least 74 tons of plutonium from 1944 to 1989 for the US Nuclear weapons program.

In turn, besides just WWII, 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste was generated, and stored among 177 tanks at the reservation. Of those, DOE says 149 were single-shell, only intended to last maybe up to years. They've far outpaced their lifespan, 68 are believed to have had some sort of leak.

These older tanks were built using concrete and carbon steel for the walls, and they were partially or mostly buried in the ground and are several stories tall.

  Now the 23rd. old A Tank farm tank is emptied.

All told, including A 102, 3.4 million gallons have been safely transferred from 23 of these ancient tanks to newer, safer double-walled containers that have far more safety and thickness than the older ones.

DOE said in a release this week:

 "Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C) workers transferred about 41,000 gallons of decades-old solid waste from single-shell Tank A-102 in the site’s East Area to a double-shell tank for continued safe storage. Waste removed from the 23 tanks to date totals about 3.4 million gallons."

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Vitrification, or glassifying and stablizing waste has already begun for low level contaminants, the work continues to remove waste from the older tanks as preparations are made for treating and disposing of the higher-level contaminants.