Nuclear waste finally being moved after 80+ years at Eastern WA site

The first containers of glassified Hanford tank waste have been delivered to their final destination, the Integrated Disposal Facility, a lined landfill at the center of the Hanford nuclear site.

Contractor Bechtel National met the Department of Energy’s deadline set in federal court to begin turning radioactive waste into a stable glass form for the first time at Hanford’s massive vitrification plant by Oct. 15. Construction on the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant in central Hanford started in 2002.

Now containers are starting to be shipped off the vitrification plant’s 65-acre campus.

The Washington state Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator, announced that the first three containers of glassified waste had been hauled using a special transporter to the Integrated Disposal Facility operated by DOE contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Co.

The stainless steel containers filled with radioactive waste immobilized in glass weigh about 7.5 tons each.

Now the first containers filled are staged for disposal at the new landfill in central Hanford after more containers of glass arrive at the landfill.

The landfill has two double-lined disposal cells with a drainage system that collect water from rain and dust-suppression activities that may have become contaminated from contact with waste. Workers will monitor, collect and treat water that reaches the liner at the bottom of the facility.

The landfill is about 1,500 feet wide, 765 feet long and 45 feet deep, with a design that will allow its current size to be expanded to six cells, as needed. It is expected to receive more than 200,000 containers before it is closed and topped with a soil cap designed to keep water out.

Construction on the landfill began in September 2004, and by 2006 construction of the initial cells were completed at a cost of $25 million. When ground was broken on the vitrification plant, glassified waste was expected to be produced in 2007.

But as work to vitrify radioactive waste was delayed, final construction of the landfill was postponed until 2018 to 2023. That included work on support structures and upgrades to the liquid collection system.

The Integrated Disposal Facility will be used only for disposal of low-level radioactive and chemical waste.

Disposing of Hanford waste

Initially, the vitrification plant will treat only the least radioactive waste held in underground tanks, with that vitrified waste being sent to the new landfill.

Treatment of high level radioactive waste is required under a federal court order to begin in 2033. That waste is required to be sent to a deep geological repository, which the nation has yet to find a location for after plans for a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., were abandoned.

The Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington adjacent to Richland was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Uranium fuel irradiated in Hanford reactors was chemically processed to remove plutonium. The stew of 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste from processing is stored in 177 underground tanks, many of them prone to leaking.

With the startup of the vitrification plant the tank waste, some stored for eight decades, is being treated for final disposal.

Some tank waste also is planned to be incorporated into concrete-like grout, and a test of that treatment of about 2,000 gallons of waste had been completed.

Grouted waste is not considered protective enough of the environment to allow it to be disposed of at the Integrated Disposal Facility, due to Hanford’s geology and groundwater that moves toward the Columbia River. Grouted waste is planned to be disposed of in Utah or Texas rather than at the Integrated Disposal Facility.

This story was originally published November 10, 2025 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Nuclear waste finally being moved after 80+ years at Eastern WA site."