Three Hanford Tanks Could Be Cleaned Out By End Of Summer

The Mobile Arm Retrieval System (MARS) arm stretches into a huge tank that simulates the nuclear waste found inside a Hanford storage tank. Photo courtesy Dept. of Energy

RICHLAND, Wash. – Washington environmental regulators are hoping that crews at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation will clean out three more aging tanks of radioactive waste by the end of summer. A federal judge has ordered that ten tanks in an area known as “C-Farm” have to be closed by September of 20-14.

Cleaning up mammoth underground tanks of radioactive waste at Hanford is like sucking thick sandy mud through a straw — sort of like a gunk milkshake.

Crews are blasting the hard-cake waste with liquids to loosen it up. So far, three of those aging vessels are between 80 and 98 percent empty.

Nancy Uziemblo watches over tank cleanup at Hanford for Washington’s Department of Ecology. She says she and the workers cleaning up the tanks have a running joke.

“Well a couple of times a week I walk in and say, ‘Are you done yet?’ And they say, ‘Almost.’ And I come in the next day and say, ‘Are you done yet?’ And they say, ‘Almost.’”

Uziemblo hopes three tanks will be finished by October. So far, Uziemblo says of Hanford’s 149 single-shell waste tanks, just seven have been cleared to Washington state’s standards.

On the Web:

Hanford tank farms:

http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/TankFarms

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