The US Department of Energy (DOE) is constructing the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant which is the largest waste pretreatment and vitrification facility in the world. This massive facility will begin commissioning operations in 2009, with full scale production beginning in 2011. While this facility will provide a much needed waste treatment capability to meet the department accelerated cleanup goals for closure of the Hanford waste tank systems, it alone will not provide enough capacity to complete the waste treatment mission by the 2028 regulatory milestone. The 53 million gallons of radioactive waste remaining in Hanford's 177 single-shell tanks (SST) and double-shell tanks (DST) present a broad range of radiochemical and chemical contents. The US Department of Energy, Office of River Protection (ORP) has established a strategy for waste retrieval and waste treatment that recognizes that all tank waste is not identical, and that other processes can be utilized to safely and economically treat tank waste for ultimate disposal. The ORP is pursuing a 3-tiered strategy to define, develop, and deploy treatment capability that will meet the 2028 waste treatment milestone. Ultimately, by tailoring the treatment process to the actual waste being processed, economies and efficiencies can be exploited to improve the overall treatment approach. In the end, DOE expects that each of the three elements will process waste as follows: (1) Transuranic (TRU) waste packaging and disposal will treat about 2 percent of the total waste sodium; (2) Supplemental treatment will account for about 47 percent of the low-activity waste (LAW) waste sodium; and (3) The Waste Treatment Plant will process about 53 percent of the LAW waste sodium and 100 percent of the high-level waste (HLW).
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