Less than a year after the U.S. Energy Secretary denied the federal government was changing its approach to the Hanford vitrification plant, DOE officials are advancing a plan to route some tank waste around it entirely.

Vitrification – the process of transforming hazardous waste into a stable glass form – is too slow and beset by technical challenges to move the Hanford mission forward on its own, said Assistant Energy Secretary Tim Walsh in an op-ed in this July edition of the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business.

And that is why he and other officials within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and its Hanford Field Office are advocating the expansion of grouting – stabilizing hazardous waste in a cement-like mixture – as part of cleanup efforts at the site north of Richland.

“This strategy is not experimental. It is not speculative. It is already supported by state and federal regulators at the Hanford site and has been successfully demonstrated through Hanford’s recent secondary waste efforts,” Walsh wrote.

It’s also an approach that could be implemented quickly, said Ray Geimer, director of the Hanford Field Office, who sat down with the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business in early July to discuss how it would work.

Cleanup infrastructure and operations could be modified for the so-called Hanford Dual Path Initiative by the beginning of 2027 as long as state and federal regulators work with DOE. 

“Now is the time,” Geimer said. “We need to move forward as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

DOE and Hanford officials are already working on a revised permit proposal for the state Department of Ecology to consider. They also recently sent out advance notice of public meetings about the glass-and-grout plan, with more details to be released later this summer.

Geimer said the grout proposal will be shared with the Hanford Advisory Board, the citizen-led group that advises DOE on the Hanford site cleanup, at its August meeting.

But the plan faces strong headwinds. 

Casey Sixkiller, director of Washington state’s Department of Ecology, told Walsh in a May letter that his agency doesn’t agree that DOE’s dual path plan will accelerate cleanup at Hanford.  

“Instead, this proposal would divert taxpayer and staff resources away from other priority work and would not result in any additional tank waste being treated,” Sixkiller said in the letter.

Longtime opponents of grouting are also lining up, saying DOE’s plan ignores the environmental and safety risks of grouting and doesn’t provide assurance that it will save money nor lead to quicker cleanup. 

“To us, it is becoming increasingly clear that DOE is putting all its eggs in the grout basket, despite the many concerns and unknowns that surround using grout to immobilize Hanford tank waste,” Nikolas Peterson, executive director of watchdog Hanford Challenge, wrote to the Journal in an email.

Vit plant production

The vit plant is currently in the hot commissioning phase before it begins operating 24/7 to treat 56 million gallons of hazardous waste stored in 177 underground tanks, a legacy of nuclear weapons manufacturing dating back to World War II and the Cold War. The facility, designed and built by Bechtel National, took decades and billions of dollars to realize.

As of June 23, the low-activity waste portion of the facility had treated 125,234 gallons of tank waste, filling 88 stainless steel containers for long-term storage. While DOE did not have a set goal for an amount of waste to be treated before full operations, it is expecting to vitrify 500,000 gallons by the end of 2026. Construction on the high-level waste section of the facility is still ongoing.

However, for every gallon of tank waste the plant vitrifies, another one to three gallons of less hazardous secondary waste is created as a byproduct. That led DOE earlier this year to seek an updated waste treatment permit to allow those byproducts to be grouted instead. The state signed off on the plan, and it went into effect at the end of June.

Ecology also approved a plan in early 2025 known as the Holistic Agreement that allows DOE to grout waste pulled from 22 tanks in the 200 Area West. DOE has contracted with Perma-Fix Northwest Inc., a radioactive waste treatment contractor with a treatment facility just off the Hanford site. From there, grouted waste then will be shipped to secure storage sites in either Utah or Texas.

Grouting benefits

Grouting is not a new concept at Hanford; it was first considered in the 1980s and 1990s as a more affordable approach to cleanup, though it was abandoned after initial applications demonstrated technical challenges. It also faced opposition for environmental and safety concerns.

But beginning in 2016, DOE began re-evaluating grout alongside other waste treatment methods as part of its Test Bed Initiative. 

In 2025, the federal agency shipped about 2,000 gallons of pretreated liquid low-activity waste from Hanford to commercial facilities in Utah and Texas via truck for grouting and permanent disposal, which federal officials considered successful, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Last year’s success drove DOE officials last summer to begin considering a dual approach to cleanup, Geimer said. 

The result is a plan that allows waste stored in the 200 Area East to also be either vitrified or grouted While the approach will require modifying the line sending pre-treated waste to the vit plant so it can also be loaded in a tanker, DOE has already developed two options for that modification.

Outside of that infrastructure work, there would be no additional cost to taxpayers, Geimer said. 

The grouting process – which Geimer said would cost about $100 per gallon while Walsh said it would be $50 per gallon – will be paid for by cost efficiencies realized by contractor Hanford Tank Waste & Closure, or H2C, which is responsible for the site’s tank farm operations.

“We absolutely can still do this with the same crews we have available to us,” Geimer said.

Grouting is anticipated to cost significantly less than vitrification. DOE officials have previously estimated vitrifying waste costs $1,400 per gallon, according to past studies from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Walsh estimates the cost at $1,200 per gallon.

But it’s the efficiency grouting provides that Geimer and Walsh point to as the biggest benefit. 

Pre-treatment operations have been idling since February as storage for pre-treated waste is maxed out while Bechtel continues to work out challenges at the vit plant during hot commissioning, Geimer said. Grouting would keep operations moving, reducing environmental harm from leaking tanks while also better using federal tax dollars.

“Without this dual capability, DOE’s ability to pretreat tank waste, meet legal tank retrieval milestones and maintain stable, continuous workforce operations on-site will be impacted,” Walsh wrote in response to Sixkiller’s letter.

And Geimer stressed that the vit plant will still be fully utilized. Congress has recently allocated $430 million toward its operation that cannot be repurposed. 

“We’re going to pump as much waste through that facility as we can,” Geimer said. “There’s no way we’re going to walk away from that. That would be ridiculous.”

Opposition

In his May letter to Walsh, Sixkiller said Ecology isn’t opposed to grouting tank waste, noting it was included as a waste treatment pathway in the Holistic Agreement and the agency’s recent approval to expand its use to treating vitrification byproducts.

“To be clear, Ecology is not foreclosing future discussions on this issue,” Sixkiller said in the letter. “However, Ecology believes the appropriate course at this time is to remain focused on implementing the agreements and initiatives already underway at Hanford.”

Sixkiller’s perspective offers more grace than many commenters on DOE’s recent proposal to grout vitrification byproducts were willing to give during the public input process in the spring. Many raised concerns about the changes opening the door for DOE to ship waste off the site for treatment, which could potentially create new hazards.

“It makes infinitely more sense to stick to the original permit … It is a safer procedure, proven effective, and yields a more compact product,” wrote one commenter to Ecology.

“You must notify communities along transportation corridors when the transport of radioactive materials are trucking through their towns,” said another commenter. “Instruct them to remain indoors. Leave shoes outside if out that day or days afterwards. Set up online radiation monitoring for these towns too. You really should never have let the genie out of the bottle.”

Hanford Challenge isn’t waiting for formal review processes to urge DOE to call off what it says is a diversion to Hanford cleanup rather than a means to accelerate it.

Peterson said the organization agrees with Ecology’s position: With the vit plant operating and the superior performance of glass in keeping radioactivity locked up, DOE should stay the course.

He also countered the benefits and advantages of grout that DOE and Hanford officials tout, noting that the volume of grout that will be created is likely much higher than currently estimated, projected cost savings are speculative at best and that long-lived radioactive atoms have been shown to leach out of grout over time, continuing to pose a risk to the environment.

“Hanford Challenge supports accelerating cleanup, but not by cutting corners, endangering worker health and safety, weakening protections, or diverting waste away from a functioning vitrification system,” Peterson wrote. “Any strategy that increases long‑term environmental risk, relies on unproven assumptions, or bypasses regulatory oversight is not acceleration. It is avoidance.”

DOE’s renewed interest in grout comes after tensions last fall when U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, sounded alarms that DOE Secretary Chris Wright and other DOE officials were seeking to halt hot commissioning at the vit plant and pivot to grouting. Wright twice denied reports that he was attempting to stop the vit plant from coming online.

“Despite reports to the contrary, the U.S. Department of Energy has made no changes to our plans or strategy for the Hanford DFLAW waste treatment facility,” Wright said in a statement at the time. 

That assurance didn’t prevent Gov. Bob Ferguson alongside Hanford worker representatives and Tri-City community leaders to decry any effort to halt the vit plant from becoming operational.

“This decision is a stunning waste of resources, a violation of multiple legal agreements and a slap in the face to the workers who have brought us to this point,” Ferguson said in a statement provided to the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business at the time. “It’s also right out of Project 2025. We will be challenging this decision. There’s too much at stake for the people of Washington and our environment.”

Project 2025 is a document developed by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation offering policy recommendations for President Donald Trump for his second term. The document specifically cites the cleanup effort at the Hanford site and calls for its low-level waste to be to be grouted rather than vitrified.

Winning over opponents

DOE is working to win over opponents to its glass-and-grout plans. 

Walsh is scheduled to meet with Sixkiller in Olympia the week of July 13, Geimer said, with the goal of understanding the state agency’s specific concerns.

Geimer said he’s working to communicate the safety and efficacy of the approach, noting that DOE has safely transported waste for years and that more than 99% of radioactivity will be removed before any waste is grouted.

“We probably dispose of more hazardous material in the city landfill,” he said, referring to heavy metals, electronics, oil and other waste.

And Geimer insists that the vit plant is still needed. There’s more hazardous waste stored elsewhere on the site, such as at B Plant and the S and U tank farms, that need the additional security of glass. 

“The vit plant was always meant for the most hazardous waste,” he said.