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Public Documents
Performance Management Plan
for the Accelerated Cleanup of Hanford
Welcome to the web site for the Performance Management Plan for the Accelerated Cleanup of the Hanford Site. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Richland Operations Office (RL) and Office of River Protection (ORP) have issued this plan to accelerate risk reduction and complete Hanford cleanup. Hanford's proposed plan has been approved by the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, Jessie Roberson, and was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget in August.
About the Plan:
The plan lays out the Department's commitment to not just accelerated completion of DOE's EM program mission at Hanford, but also to high quality, comprehensive cleanup that protects public health and the environment.
The draft submitted to DOE-HQ on May 1, 2002 outlined five strategic initiatives that, supported by a near-term increase in funding, would put us in position to end the Environmental Management (EM) mission at Hanford by 2035, or sooner, and save tens of billions of dollars. Based on public comments and tribal input on the draft plan, and working with our regulators, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington Department of Ecology, we've now made substantial improvements.
We added a new groundwater protection initiative, specifically aimed at controlling groundwater contaminant sources, improving groundwater remediation actions, and integrating site groundwater monitoring needs. We added a new section in the plan that clearly identifies the key assumptions that are critical to ensure we meet the goals the plan establishes. These assumptions, along with greater details surrounding each initiative, provide for better understanding of our specific acceleration plans. The plan reiterates DOE's commitment to use the Tri-Party Agreement as the primary compliance document and to provide public involvement opportunities whenever the substance of our acceleration plan is updated. In addition, we made it very clear that while we are working to accelerate cleanup schedules and achieve major cost savings, we will not compromise the quality of the cleanup itself. We are committed to conducting our cleanup operations in full compliance with all requirements and cleanup standards to ensure protection of our workers, human health, and the environment.
The six strategic initiatives outlined in the plan call for DOE to:
- restore the Columbia River corridor by 2012 -- completing remediation of 50 burial grounds, 551 waste sites, 261 excess facilities, and seven plutonium production reactors, thereby reducing risk to the river and shrinking the Hanford Site by some 85%;
- take several near-term actions to ensure the tank waste program ends by 2035, including increasing the capacity of the planned Waste Treatment Plant; demonstrating tank closure and starting to close tanks within five years; and demonstrating alternative treatment and immobilization solutions for lower-risk tank waste;
- accelerate the stabilization and shipment off site of nuclear materials - including cleaning up K Basins spent nuclear fuel, sludge, debris and water 10 months early; stabilizing and securely storing remaining plutonium nine years sooner; demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant seven years earlier; and evaluating the benefits of moving Hanford's water-stored cesium and strontium capsules to a secure dry storage facility before shipping them directly (non-vitrified) to the national geologic repository;
- address waste issues by accelerating treatment and disposal of mixed-low level waste, retrieving and shipping transuranic waste offsite years ahead of current plans, and coordinating remaining waste site remediation with tank closure;
- use Hanford's massive decommissioned chemical separations buildings as waste disposal facilities, and accelerate the disposition of the Central Plateau's 900 excess facilities and more than 800 non-tank-farm waste sites by using regional and other grouping strategies; and
- protect groundwater resources by removing or isolating contaminant sources on the Central Plateau, remediating other contamination sources, dramatically reducing the conditions that have the potential to drive contaminants into the groundwater, treating groundwater, and integrating monitoring requirements.
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