nuclear-news

Hanford begins removing waste from 24th single-shell tank.

Nuclear Newswire, Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said crews at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., have started retrieving radioactive waste from Tank A-106, a 1-million-gallon underground storage tank built in the 1950s.

Tank A-106 will be the 24th single-shell tank that crews have cleaned out at Hanford, which is home to 177 underground waste storage tanks: 149 single-shell tanks and 28 double-shell tanks. Ranging from 55,000 gallons to more than 1 million gallons in capacity, the tanks hold around 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste resulting from plutonium production at the site.

According to the Washington Department of Ecology, at least 68 of Hanford’s tanks are assumed to have leaked in the past, and three are currently leaking.

The transfer: Tank A-106 contains about 80,000 gallons of solid waste, which now are being transferred to one of the newer, double-shell tanks for continued safe storage. A-106 is one of two tanks currently undergoing retrieval operations by the Hanford Field Office and its tank operations contractor, Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C). In March 2025, H2C began retrieving waste from Tank A-102, a 1-million-gallon tank holding about 41,000 gallons of solid waste……………………………

Hanford’s waste tanks are organized into 18 different groups, called tank farms. The A Tank Farm, which contains six tanks, each with a million-gallon capacity, is the third farm to undergo retrieval at the site. Retrieval field operations on the farm’s first tank and Hanford’s 22nd single-shell tank, A-101, were completed last September……………………………… https://www.ans.org/news/2026-02-11/article-7751/hanford-begins-removing-waste-from-24th-singleshell-tank/

February 16, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes