Located only 215 miles up the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, lies the Hanford Nuclear Facility. From 1943 to 1989, the facility produced thousands of nuclear weapons and subsequent nuclear waste. The Department of Energy (DOE) manages the sprawling 560 square mile Hanford site, the largest nuclear waste site in the western hemisphere. Presently, 54 million gallons of High-Level Waste (HLW) remain in various storage compartments across Hanford. The DOE is responsible for eventually containing 99 percent of the HLW proposed to be retrievable at Hanford. Although there are various methods of storing and containing HLW, the DOE is implementing the most viable option available, known as vitrification.

High-Level Waste refers to extremely radioactive waste products remaining as a result of the nuclear process. These materials require permanent isolation from humans and the environment. The radioactive materials must cool in specially designed canisters, pools, and vaults for decades prior to disposal. As the waste cools, it may be safely prepared for long term storage. It takes about 10,000 years for the radioactivity of HLW to decay. Due to the high radioactivity, HLW must be solidified prior to its transport, packaging, and disposal (“Vitrification”). There are numerous methods, actual and theoretical, for disposing of nuclear waste.

Vitrification is not the only proposed method to contain and store HLW at Hanford. Another option is to recycle some of the nuclear material in civilian reactors, thus reprocessing, or reusing, some of the waste. Recently, Steam Reforming has shown potential. During the process, nuclear waste is heated at high temperatures with additional chemicals, eventually cooling to form crystallized pellets, ready for storage. In addition, the French nuclear services company, Cogema developed an Advanced Cold Crucible Melter (ACCM) with the capability to heat materials at a larger rate and process HLW expediently into a safe form of containment (“Hanford’s vitrification”). Perhaps the most far fetched, but safest method to be developed in the future is termed Subductive Waste Disposal Method (SWDM). In the proposed SWDM process, HLW will be transported in canisters to the seafloor and deposited on the edge of an active subduction plate. In theory, the nuclear waste canister would eventually be carried 2000m below the ocean floor as the plate tectonic with the deposited nuclear waste canister subducts into the earth. SWDM is not currently possible, but with continuing advances in technology perhaps this alternative method will become a reality to provide a means to safely dispose of HLW.

Even if the science fiction concept of the SWDM were an option for the safe disposal of HLW at Hanford, all the nuclear waste must first be safely contained and prepared to transport to a final depository. The environment and civilization should not be exposed to the radioactive material, and the Department of Energy is the government agency responsible for developing a permanent and safe disposal capacity for nuclear waste material (Nuclear). Unfortunately, all of the methods listed above are not permanent, long-term solutions to be utilized in the effort to safely contain and store the HLW located across the Hanford site.

Of course, recycling nuclear material is a logical idea. If possible, the DOE should reuse nuclear material with the potential to produce additional energy. But, how do we safely transport the extremely dangerous substances to reactors across the nation? After HLW is reprocessed, it remains HLW and eventually must be prepared for safe transport to a permanent depository. Unfortunately, the crystallized pellets formed during the Steam Reforming process decompose before the 10,000-year hazardous radioactive lifetime of the nuclear material, thus making the process inapplicable to contain HLW (“Vitrification Information”). In order to safeguard the environment and future generations from the hazardous material, Hanford’s HLW necessitates a containment method that will remain intact and secure for at least 10,000 years. Utilizing the most state of the art nuclear waste processing and disposal methods available is essential to securing the HLW at Hanford.

Since the SWDM is not feasible, and other options are capable of providing only temporary HLW containment, the DOE is constructing a vitrification plant at Hanford. In the process known as vitrification, HLW is heated, mixed with glass, and encased within a solid block of glass, stable for long-term storage. The vitrified glass container will not decompose before the HLW suspended within the glass loses its radioactivity (Nuclear). The plant is projected to vitrify the 54 million gallons of HLW into 15,000 radioactive glass logs. Vitrification of nuclear waste is the only long-term solution to safely storing HLW for the 10,000 years of radioactive hazard. At an estimated cost of $5.7 billion, the Hanford vitrification plant is the largest construction project currently underway by the US government (“Hanford Site”). When the plant is operational, it is estimated that 6 percent of the 54 million gallons of HLW will be vitrified into borosilicate glass rods by 2009. The DOE projects that by 2028, 99 percent of the nuclear waste stored at Hanford will be vitrified and prepared for long term storage (“Hanford Site”).

In Europe, vitrification is routinely utilized to contain radioactive material. In both the United Kingdom and France, vitrification has successfully worked with nuclear waste comparable to US weapons waste. In South Carolina, at the Savannah River nuclear site, the DOE is currently operating the world’s largest vitrification plant, sequestering 34 million gallons of nuclear waste ("Hanford’s vitrification”). The glass-making process of securing the material is considered the best known solution for long term nuclear waste storage.