The Hanford Site Mission

For more than 40 years, Hanford Site facilities were dedicated primarily to producing plutonium for national defense and managing the resulting wastes. In recent years, efforts at the site have focused on developing new waste treatment and disposal technologies and cleaning up contamination left over from historical operations.

The current site mission includes the following:

• management of wastes and the handling, storage, and disposal of radioactive, hazardous, mixed, or sanitary wastes from current operations

• stabilizing facilities by transferring them from an operating mode to a surveillance and maintenance mode

• maintenance and cleanup of several hundred inactive radioactive, hazardous, and mixed waste disposal sites (there are over 2,200 waste sites of all kinds at Hanford); remediation of contaminated groundwater; and surveillance, maintenance, and decommissioning of inactive facilities

• research and development in energy, health, safety, environmental sciences, molecular sciences, environmental restoration, waste management, and national security

• development of new technologies for environmental restoration and waste management, including site characterization and assessment methods; waste minimization, treatment, and remediation technology.

DOE has set a goal of cleaning up Hanford's waste sites and bringing its facilities into compliance with local, state, and federal environmental laws. In addition to supporting the environmental management mission, DOE also is supporting other special initiatives in accomplishing its national objective.

Current waste management activities at the Hanford Site include, primarily, managing wastes with high and low levels of radioactivity (from the nuclear materials production activities) in the 200-East and 200-West Areas. Key waste management facilities include the underground waste storage tanks, Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, Plutonium Finishing Plant, Central Waste Complex, Low-Level Burial Grounds, B Plant/Waste Encapsulation Facility, Effluent Treatment Facility, Waste Receiving and Processing Facility, Transuranic Storage and Assay Facility, and 242-A Evaporator. In addition, irradiated nuclear fuel is stored in the 100-K Area in fuel storage basins.

Environmental restoration includes activities to decontaminate and decommission facilities and to clean up or restore inactive waste sites. The Hanford surplus facilities program conducts surveillance and maintenance of such facilities; the cleanup and disposal of more than 100 facilities have begun.

Research and technology-development activities are intended to improve the techniques and reduce the costs of waste management, environmental protection, and site restoration.