Last Updated May 13, 2025

Tank Waste Cleanup in 200 West Area

Hanford has 56 million gallons of high-level tank waste in 177 aging, leak-prone, underground storage tanks. Most of the infrastructure for tank waste treatment is in the 200 East part of the Hanford site, which is 7 miles from 200 West. This page is focused on the West Area Risk Management “WARM” Project. Click here to dive into the bigger picture of tank waste cleanup at Hanford.

There are 86 tanks in 200 West with a total volume of 21.8 million gallons of high-level tank waste, as of March 2025 data pulled from PNNL’s PHOENIX platform. 200 West has 3 double-shelled tanks SY-101, SY-102, and SY-103. All the rest of the tanks in 200 West are single-shelled, meaning they only have one layer of containment. Those 83 single-shelled tanks are grouped in “tank farms”: T, TY, TX, U, S, and SX tank farms. 

There are 91 tanks in 200 East with a total volume of 34.7 million gallons of high-level tank waste, as of March 2025 data pulled from PNNL’s PHOENIX platform. 25 of the tanks in 200 East are double-shelled meaning they have an extra layer of containment. The double-shell tank farms are: AN, AZ, AY, AW, and AP tank farms. There are 66 single-shelled tanks in 200 East in B, BX, BY, C, AX, and A tank farms. This is where the Waste Treatment Plant is being built to immobilize tank waste in glass, called vitrification. USDOE is getting ready to start vitrifying low activity waste in the Low Activity Waste facility in August 2025.

What is the WARM Project?

The 2025 Holistic Settlement Agreement added new work proposing to grout 15 million gallons of waste from 22 tanks in the 200 West Area for offsite disposal. The waste volume being considered for treatment is now estimated at 32-39 million gallons of waste that would need to be pretreated prior to immobilization. This new proposal for cleaning up Hanford tank waste in 200 West Area is called the “WARM Project” or West Area Risk Management Project. According to the Supplemental Data report for the WARM WIR Evaluation, this initial plan may expand to include waste from 44 tanks in 200 West Area. Liquid is added to the tanks to mobilize waste during tank retrievals, so you end up with a bigger volume of waste than you started with. 

Hanford Challenge wants a tank waste treatment plan that works. What do we mean by “works”? We want workers, the public, and the environment to be protected.

Right now, the best plan that fits this criteria is immobilizing tank waste in glass through vitrification. We believe there are a lot of good reasons for being skeptical of grout plans, which you can dive into on our page dedicated to grout, here. In our opinion, the Department of Energy has yet to demonstrate that grout will actually be less expensive, save time, or offer the same level of protection as glass. Moreover, we are concerned that the Department may use grout as a pretext to take significant shortcuts in Hanford cleanup.

In order for the WARM Project to proceed USDOE needs to:

  • Comply with NEPA Rules: Prove that this new work scope does not require a new Environmental Impact Statement, write a new Environmental Impact Statement to consider the impacts of the new work, or supplement an existing Environmental Impact Statement. Impacts that need to be considered include:

    • Impacts to building new infrastructure in 200 West to pretreat 32-39 million gallons of tank waste to remove Cesium-137 and possibly Strontium-90, including a storage pad for the ion-exchange columns which need to be switched out when they are full. The ion-exchange is considered high-level waste and will need to be vitrified in the High Level Waste Facility at some point in the future.

    • Transporting weekly shipments of liquid or grouted tank waste for 11+ years from Hanford to Texas and Utah. USDOE estimates that grouted waste would be 33 shipments/week, and liquid waste would be 12 shipments/week.

    • Impacted populations along possible transportation routes.

    • Weather impacts on transportation routes and timing shipments for safe transport.

  • Change Waste Category: Determine that the waste proposed for treatment is not high-level waste through a Draft Waste Incidental to Reprocessing Evaluation, followed by a Waste Incidental to Reprocessing Determination. 

  • Update the RCRA Permit: Update the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Site Wide Permit to allow for this work to proceed through permit modifications. 

  • Get a Treatability Variance to Comply with RCRA: Request and receive a Treatability Variance from the Environmental Protection Agency that proves the tank waste is able to be treated with grout instead of the requirement to glassify the tank waste through vitrification. It is unclear whether or not they would need multiple Treatability Variances to cover waste from individual tanks or if they can get one variance for all of the tanks they identify for the project. In conversations with EPA about the Test Bed Initiative Treatability Variance, EPA indicated that any future variance would not be a catch-all variance, but instead apply to waste from a specific tank due to the varied chemistry of the waste in each of Hanford’s tanks.

  • Make Grout That Works, Doesn’t Blow the Budget, and Doesn’t Exceed Disposal Capacity: Successfully mix pretreated tank waste, which has varied chemistry and composition from tank to tank, in grout so that it: 

    • solidifies, 

    • has a low enough ratio of grout to waste to not be prohibitively expensive to transport,

    • Has a low enough ratio of grout to waste so that the total volume of waste that needs to be disposed, does not exceed existing disposal capacity at proposed disposal sites in Texas and Utah.

  • Build Out Infrastructure to do the Work in 200 West: Design, permit, and build new facilities in the 200 West Area to safely retrieve, pretreat, and store treated waste. 

  • Prove Waste Meets Criteria Prior to Shipping: Before being shipped, liquid waste has to go through a series of tests to ensure that it remains uniformly mixed in transport, and meets the transportation, and disposal requirements.

Open Comment Period on the WARM Project: Does USDOE Need More Analysis To Proceed?

The U.S. Department of Energy has an open comment period on its Draft Supplement Analysis of the Final Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement - 200 West Tank Waste Treatment (SA).

This document makes the case that the new work scope, to grout 22-24 tanks from 200 West Area, does not need a new Environmental Impact Statement or a supplement to an existing Environmental Impact Statement.

We disagree with USDOE’s conclusion. Hanford Challenge believes more analysis in the form of a new EIS, or supplement to an existing EIS is necessary. Comments are due by May 23, 2025.

Check out our petition here. You can customize your comments!

Our Suggested comments Include:

  • Old EIS Is Not Enough: More analysis is needed on actual tank waste from 200 West Area that is part of the WARM project. Get that data and work with the regulators to write a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or a supplement to an existing EIS that assesses risks from this specific proposal. Though the 2012 Tank Closure and Waste Management EIS did look at mobilizing, pretreating, and grouting tank waste, it did not specifically consider mobilizing, pretreating, and grouting 32-39 million gallons of 200 West Area tank waste and shipping large volumes of this waste offsite for disposal. The 1997 Transportation Analysis is outdated and did not consider this scenario either. A new EIS or a supplement to an existing EIS is required.

  • Grout-to-Waste Ratios Matter, A Lot: One way the WARM project succeeds or fails rests on how much grout is needed per unit of tank waste to create a solid. Don’t plan this project hoping that the most optimistic grout-to-waste-ratio is going to work. Rigorously test grout formulas on varied samples of tank waste in 200 West Area that are part of the WARM project, don’t just rely on the outcome of the Test Bed Initiative.

  • 1997 Transportation Analysis Doesn’t Cut It: An up-to-date risk assessment is needed to look at different transportation scenarios for shipping liquid and/or grouted tank waste by truck and rail, and should include specific routes the waste could take. Shipments from Hanford to Texas and Utah range from 33 shipments/week for grouted waste, and 12 shipments/week for liquid waste for 11 years. Reassess the impacts specific to this project as opposed to relying on outdated information from the 1997 Final Waste Management Programmatic EIS for Managing, Treatment, and Disposal of Radioactive and Hazardous Waste.

  • Don’t Use PermaFix Northwest: Based on issues with PermaFix Northwest’s safety record, location in a residential community, and issues with trucking tank waste from Hanford to PFNW, don’t use PermaFix Northwest to treat Hanford’s waste. 

The 200 West Area Tank Waste Treatment Project includes:

  • Grouting 32-39 million gallons of pretreated tank waste from 22-24 tanks in the 200 West Area for offsite disposal. This may also include retrieving waste from 2 Double Shell Tanks for staging waste in SY farm, and could scale up to include 44 tanks in total. Facilities would be built in the 200 West Area to pretreat the tank waste to remove Cesium-137, and potentially Strontium-90. 

  • Offsite Grouting Scenario: 

    • The offsite grouting scenario uses a combination of facilities in Texas, Utah, and Washington state to grout the waste, with waste being disposed of in Texas and Utah. Waste would be pretreated at the Hanford Site to remove Cesium-137 (and possibly Strontium-90) and then sent in liquid form to the following places:

      • Texas: Waste Control Specialists (WCS) would accept 2 million gallons of liquid pretreated waste per year. The waste would be grouted by WCS and disposed of in the shallow commercial burial ground in Andrews, Texas. WCS can accept Class A, B, and C wastes.

      • Utah: EnergySolutions would accept 873,000 gallons of liquid pretreated tank waste per year, grout and dispose of the waste in its commercially operated shallow burial ground in Clive, Utah. Utah can only accept Class A waste. Some projections show that Utah may have to build a new grout facility to handle this volume of waste.

      • Washington State: PermaFix Northwest (PFNW) would accept 37,000 gallons of liquid pretreated tank waste per year at its facility in Richland, WA. PFNW would grout the waste and be responsible for its disposal at Waste Control Specialists in Andrews, Texas. 

  • Transportation options USDOE is considering for this project:

    • Truck and Rail: One option would be to use a combination of truck and rail to move the waste. Pretreated waste, either grouted or liquid, would be transported offsite by truck to either a rail spur where the containers are sent via train to Texas or Utah or to PFNW where the waste is grouted and then shipped via train to Texas. Each route would be to the facilities and back to Hanford, with emptied containers coming back to Hanford for reuse. The number of miles required for transportation and number of trips per week depend on whether the pretreated waste is being transported as liquid or grout and which routes are used. Another factor includes the grout to waste ratio. If more grout is needed it dramatically impacts the number of miles and shipments. 

    • Just Truck: Another option would be to just use trucks to transport the waste. The number of miles required for transportation and number of trips per week depend on whether the pretreated waste is being transported as liquid or grout. Another factor includes the grout to waste ratio. If more grout is needed it dramatically impacts the number of miles and shipments. 

  • Onsite Grouting Scenario: 

    • USDOE is also considering building an onsite grout plant in the 200 West Area where this work would occur on the Hanford Site. 

    • USDOE has indicated, but not yet fully considered, that it may also look into building a new commercial facility in Richland, WA.

    • The pretreated and then grouted waste would be shipped to Texas and Utah by rail and/or truck.

  • Waste Classification Assumptions & Disposal Facility Limits:

    • USDOE assumes that 70% of the waste would go to Texas and 30% would qualify as Class A and be sent to Utah. Each facility has said they have the capacity to dispose of the following amounts of waste:

      • Waste Control Specialists, Texas limits: License allows for 300,000 cubic yards of waste and total activity limit (total decay corrected radioactivity) of 5,500,000 curies for containerized Class A, B, and C low level wastes collectively.

        • 1.5 expansion factor* for waste once grout is added: 55% of the current license volume limit

        • 1.8 expansion factor* for waste once grout is added: 67% of the current license volume limit

      • EnergySolutions, Utah: License allows for 1,354,092 cubic yards volume limit for the mixed waste landfill cell.

        • 1.5 expansion factor for waste once grout is added: 71,324 cubic yards, or 5.3% of the current license total volume limit.

        • 1.8 expansion factor for waste once grout is added: 6.8% of the current license volume limit

*The expansion factor is how much bigger the volume of waste is once the grout and pretreated liquid tank waste are mixed. The SA acknowledges that the expansion factor could be as high as 1.8. However, we would like to note that only 3 gallons of actual Hanford tank waste have been mixed with grout as of May 2025. We do not believe there is enough information to assume that this will be the expansion factor range. The expansion factor determines the number of shipments, how long it takes to ship the waste in a grouted form, and cost estimates.

Resources to Learn More!