It’s a worry that USA’s Dept of Energy aims for cheaper commercial treatment of Hanford nuclear waste

Feds push for low-cost commercial treatment of Hanford waste. State has concerns, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com, RICHLAND, WA

The Department of Energy is making plans to encase 2,000 gallons of waste now held in Hanford’s underground tanks in concrete-like grout, part of a continuing demonstration project.

DOE recently released a fact sheet that indicated its interest in continuing the demonstration project and listing what it sees as the benefits of the project, called the test bed initiative.

The project is a departure from plans to turn radioactive and hazardous chemical waste into a stable glass form at the $17 billion vitrification plant under construction at the nuclear reservation.

But DOE still needs to get other parties on board.

The Washington Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator, has sent DOE a list of questions about the project. The state would need to issue permits and approvals for some aspects of the demonstration project.

“Current core work at the Hanford Site is already being deferred and delayed due to a lack of funds,” said Maia Bellon, Ecology director, in the letter to DOE. “We are concerned about (Department of) Energy pursuing a new initiative that could divert even more funding away from existing priorities that are tied to consent decree deadlines.”

The project also faces a congressional hurdle.

Language included in the Senate’s fiscal 2019 Hanford budget recommends no money be spent on the test bed initiative.

The Senate budget language must be reconciled with the House budget language for the same year, which was bullish on the project. It directed $15 million be spent on the next phase of the demonstration.

The first phase of the demonstration project, grouting three gallons of the 56 million gallons of waste held in Hanford’s underground tanks, was successfully completed in December.

………The state of Washington and the Hanford Advisory Board have advocated for more double-shell tanks to be built to provide more space for waste to be emptied from single-shell tanks. DOE has been opposed to building more storage tanks, saying it would rather spend money on treating waste………https://www.tri-cityherald.com/latest-news/article215368935.html

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Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist

The climate change threat to nuclear power

By Natalie Kopytko “…………The final problem is droughts, which climate models predict will become longer and larger. Legal battles have already been fought in the US over scarce water resources in regions with nuclear power plants, including the Catawba river basin in the Carolinas and the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint river basin in Georgia, Florida and Alabama. These battles show us that adapting our systems – including nuclear power – to a reduced supply of water will not be easy.

The International Atomic Energy Agency advises the nuclear industry to build power plants to last for 100 years. Given that climate models don’t agree on what to expect within this time period, it is not at all clear how this can be achieved.

New reactors could use dry or hybrid systems with lower water requirements, but the costs of running these systems are likely to be prohibitive. Considering nuclear power plants already have problems with construction cost overruns, any additional costs are likely to meet resistance.

What is to be done? Most forms of energy generation are vulnerable in some way to the effects of climate change, and the fact that nuclear power is among them is yet another argument against a wholesale shift towards this source of energy.

The bottom line is that if nuclear power is to be used to mitigate the effects of climate change, it must also be capable of adapting to them. There are serious doubts that it can. more https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028138-200-the-climate-change-threat-to-nuclear-power/

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