FINAL BILL REPORT

                 HJM 4022

Brief Description:  Requesting full funding for a vitrification treatment plant at the Hanford site.

Sponsors:  Representatives Delvin, Hankins, G. Chandler, B. Chandler, Mastin, Lisk, Grant, Linville and Mitchell.

House Committee on Agriculture & Ecology

Senate Committee on Energy, Technology & Telecommunications

Background:

Sixty percent of the nation's nuclear waste is stored in aging tanks at the Hanford site, a 560-square mile area in southeastern Washington near Richland.  The tank waste, which has been accumulating since 1944, is the result of producing plutonium for national defense.  There are 177 underground storage tanks containing 54 million gallons of highly radioactive waste.  Each tank is the size of a football field (300 feet by 160 feet)  and 150 feet high. 

On May 15, 1989, the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Washington Department of Ecology signed a comprehensive cleanup and compliance agreement for the cleanup of the Hanford site.  The agreement was amended in October 1993 with a plan to use vitrification to solidify high-level and low-level waste stored in the tanks.  Vitrification changes the form of waste from a leachable sludge into an immobile solid.

Facility construction for vitrification of low-activity waste was scheduled to begin in 1994, and facility construction for vitrification of high-level waste is scheduled to begin in 2002.  The total cost of cleaning up the 177 underground storage tanks at Hanford is estimated at $30.5 billion.

Summary of Bill:

The President and Congress are asked to provide full funding as necessary to build the vitrification plant, retrieve waste from the tanks, feed waste into the plant, and dispose of the resulting glass logs.

Votes on Final Passage:

House970

Senate470