The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) prepared a Draft Tank Closure and Waste Management (TC & WM) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Hanford Site, located in Richland, Washington. The DOE is the lead agency for this EIS and the Washington State Department of Ecology is a cooperating agency on this EIS.  The Draft TC&WM EIS analyzes the following;

Tank Closure
Tank closure includes management of the waste inventory of about 55 million gallons of mixed radioactive and chemically hazardous waste, currently stored in underground storage tanks. The analysis considers tank waste storage, retrieval, treatment, and disposal, as well as the impacts of different scenarios for final closure of the single-shell tank (SST) system.

Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Decommissioning
The EIS includes proposed activities to decommission FFTF, a nuclear test reactor at Hanford, including management of decommissioning-generated waste, such as remote-handled special components (RH-SCs), and disposition of Hanford’s inventory of radioactively contaminated bulk sodium from FFTF and other onsite facilities.

Waste Management
The EIS evaluates the potential impacts of ongoing solid waste management operations at Hanford, as well as the proposed disposal of low-level radioactive waste (LLW) and mixed low-level radioactive waste (MLLW) from Hanford and a limited volume of LLW and MLLW from other DOE sites in an Integrated Disposal Facility(ies) (IDF) located at Hanford.

The 140-day public comment period is from October 30, 2009 extended through May 3, 2010. Comments should be sent to Mary Beth Burandt, Document Manager, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of River Protection, P.O. Box 1178, Richland, WA 99352, Fax: 888-785-2865, Phone: 888-829-6347, Email: TC&WMEIS@saic.com.

Specific dates and locations for public hearings have not been set and will be announced in the Federal Register.

Environmental Impact Statement