Gov. Kotek, environmental advocates demand clarity on Department of Energy’s plans for Hanford Site’s nuclear waste. Public comment is open until Sept. 1.
Oregon is not home to the most contaminated land in North America — that award goes to Washington. But if things go according to plan, Oregonians could see nuclear waste passing through in the years to come.
Over the past four years, the Department of Energy, or DoE, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, and the Washington Department of Ecology developed a new “holistic agreement” laying out plans for cleanup at the Hanford Site. The Hanford cleanup is an ongoing, decadeslong DoE project to treat and transport 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste from 177 underground tanks leftover from World War II plutonium production.
Advocates and elected officials say the parties executed the process behind closed doors and failed to include input from local tribes most impacted by the plan.
Gov. Tina Kotek voiced concerns in a July 11 letter to the three parties. Kotek said the scope and consequence of the agreement are among the most anticipated and potentially significant risk reduction actions at the Hanford site in recent memory.
“The ongoing process for receiving and accounting for input from the State of Oregon, Tribal governments, and the public on substantive issues relating to the solidification and transport of liquid tank waste is insufficient and risks undercutting support for the accelerated reduction of radioactive waste at the Hanford site that is in everyone's interest,” Kotek said in the letter.
Kotek’s letter outlined three major concerns with the agreement, including whether the nuclear waste will be transported in solid or liquid form and how the agencies will align with National Environmental Protection Act requirements for transport and disposal. Those concerns echo an uneasiness long embedded in the DoE’s secretive experiment.
The Hanford Site, in Eastern Washington, is the most contaminated area in North America. It is also one of the most expensive cleanup sites in the world — an estimated $300 to $640 billion project expected to conclude in 2084, at the earliest, according to the Government Accountability Office.
A May 2023 accountability office report found the DoE could save significant time and upwards of $95 billion by essentially mixing the waste into cement — known as grouting — changing a long-held agreement that it would use the much safer and more stable process of turning the waste into glass — known as vitrification.
Dan Serres, Columbia Riverkeeper advocacy director, said the tanks holding the waste absorb a significant portion of the total budget, and the DoE is entertaining ideas to save money, and potentially time. It may decide to transport some of the material as a liquid via trucks, and it is seriously considering grouting the lower-level contaminants before transporting it. Advocates say the route may include highways like Interstate 84 or the Deschutes River rail corridor, which snakes through Bend as it makes its way to facilities in Utah or Texas.
“That's just astounding for people to realize,” Serres said. “It was really good to see Governor Kotek at least raise her hand and say, ‘Hey, there's something going on here that we don't fully understand and that people should probably be informed about.’”
In a July 26 response to Kotek’s letter, the DoE downplayed the risks associated with site cleanup, saying it has not determined where it will grout the treated, low-activity tank waste, and has not yet defined the transportation routes out of Washington to disposal facilities. It noted the possibility it might grout the waste at the Hanford site first and then transport it out of Washington. Alternatively, it may transport the waste as a liquid to be grouted off-site.
“This determination will, in turn, inform future decisions about the facilities, infrastructure and mode of transport necessary to perform the separation, pretreatment, and/or treatment of the tank waste for off-site disposal,” the DoE letter said.
Nikolas Peterson, Hanford Challenge executive director, said the DoE initially decided on vitrification because it determined grout was not a sufficient disposal method. Hanford Challenge is a nonprofit organization advocating for efficient cleanup, accountability and worker safety at Hanford. Advocates are laser-focused on a comprehensive cleanup, prioritizing the safety of the people most impacted to ensure the local tribes ultimately get land back in as pristine a condition as it once was.
Long game The three parties entered into a 1989 agreement establishing milestones for the site’s cleanup called the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order, otherwise called the Tri-Party Agreement.
That agreement required the DoE to construct and operate a waste treatment facility to vitrify the nuclear tank waste by the end of 2028 and complete waste retrieval from 149 tanks at the site by 2018. The State of Washington filed a complaint in 2010 alleging DoE violated the Tri-Party Agreement by failing to meet certain milestones to keep them on track.
Rather than continuing litigating the matter, effectively delaying the timeline it would theoretically follow, the parties entered into a consent decree dictating further plans. The new agreement, released April 29, seeks to address disputes about safety and milestone dates, ultimately facilitating modifications to both the consent decree and the Tri-Party Agreement to resolve aspects of the Hanford cleanup. The modifications are subject to public comment until Sept. 1.
Nuclear colonialism For many, the site represents one imperial violence after another, from the theft of sacred Indigenous land to the bombs produced there. The U.S. Department of War, now the Department of Defense, evicted everyone from the White Bluffs and Hanford lands in 1943, giving them just 30 days to evacuate so the top-secret plutonium project could begin. There, the U.S. developed atomic weapons, as part of the World War II Manhattan Project, including the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. The DoE controls 580 square miles at the Hanford Site — a deeply significant cultural area for tribes since time immemorial.
Advocates say the lack of input from tribal governments and the lack of specific details as to what form the waste will be transported in, whether by rail or truckload, or where the waste will end up, are top concerns about the agreement. Peterson said DoE has not provided enough explicit details for advocates seeking to comment in a meaningful way, in part by opening the public comment period during the summer and excluding nearby major cities like Seattle and Portland.
“If I were to design a public process to exclude public comments, it would have looked pretty similar to the one that they held,” Peterson said. “It's just this culture that I think comes out of the Manhattan Project and World War II and then through the Cold War, of just so much secrecy.”
The DoE does consult on Hanford issues somewhat regularly with the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Nez Perce Tribe, but it did not involve the tribes in the process of developing the agreement.
A DoE spokesperson commented on the department’s relationships with area tribes but refused to provide named attribution for the statement.
Serres said a benefit of the agreement is that it draws attention to a multi-generational human rights impact on the Columbia River from nuclear colonialism.
“This is land that has been impacted by nuclear colonization in a way that's almost unique in the world,” Serres said.
Advocates are also concerned about nuclear waste going through communities, including Tribal nations, en route to the processing plants.
“Maybe don't transport it through Idaho, either,” Peterson said. “Not that Oregon can decide what goes through Idaho, but maybe they can work together, and maybe between Washington and Oregon and the Tribes and other interested groups, we can say, ‘make it safer,’ as much as we can, so that it doesn't affect whatever community it goes through along the road.”
The Oregon Department of Energy, or ODoE, submitted comments Aug. 27 in support of the concerns raised by Kotek, saying transportation of Hanford waste through Oregon is its top concern. Asked if ODoE is in discussion with neighboring states to ensure safety on the front end so communities and tribes on any route will be less impacted, Maxwell Woods, ODoE assistant director for nuclear safety and emergency preparedness, said ODoE regularly works with other Oregon state agencies, neighboring states, and federal government partners in transporting radioactive material.
“The waste should be in a solid form before leaving Hanford, our communities should be informed and engaged in an open and transparent planning process, and our emergency responders should be trained and prepared for a shipping campaign,” Woods said. “These principles should apply to communities in other states, as well, though, of course, we do not speak for any other state.”
No magic wand Advocates see some positives in the agreement, namely a forbearance provision barring DoE from reinterpreting which wastes are classified as non-High Level Waste. The provision dictates how DoE will be able to treat various chemicals, as waste it deems non-High Level may be less likely to go through the safer vitrification process and would likely end up in the riskier grout form.
“It avoids that scenario … where the Energy Department gets sole authority to wave a magic wand over the tank waste and say, ‘This is all now low level,’” Peterson said.
The agreement also injects further accountability measures into the cleanup process, including how much waste may remain at the site. It also acknowledges new tanks may be necessary to contain radioactive materials while the cleanup continues.
“We will press for a cleanup that addresses the problems that are being identified in great detail by the tribes who are impacted by Hanford's contamination,” Serres said. “There's an opportunity for the Department of Energy to learn a lot more, but they will have to stop and listen to the people who are impacted.”
The Hanford site was intentionally built on the Columbia River, as the plutonium production process required a rapidly flowing water source, and the nearby Grand Coulee Dam provided electricity to the site. While the agreement focuses on tank cleanup, the comprehensive cleanup process is not only about the tanks near the river.
As the tanks age, material leaks into the soil, into the groundwater and ultimately into the Columbia River. As recently as mid-August, the DoE found new contaminated waste leaking from Tank 101 due to the aging tanks.
Advocates say the DoE should be responsible for the more than one million gallons of radioactive waste that leaked into the soil.
“We know that a lot of the radioactive material is very mobile, very long-lived and very poisonous to people,” Serres said. “It's either toxic or radioactive, and it moves inexorably to the Columbia River. The plan right now is to allow a lot of that material to continue to move through the environment for 1000s of years.”
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