Octover 23, 2003

Transuranic Waste Retrieval and Processing at the Hanford Site

In 1996, the Department of Energy (Department) amended its Tri-Party Agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Washington regarding cleanup of the Hanford Site. Included in the amendment was an enforceable milestone that the Department would remove about 10,000 containers of transuranic (TRU) waste from Trench 4, located in Hanford's Low-Level Burial Grounds, by the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2004. The Richland Operations Office established a related goal to process and ship all of the site's legacy TRU waste – estimated at about 38,000 containers – to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) by 2027.