In 1999, the Department of Energy's Richland Operations Office (Richland), the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, and Washington State Department of Ecology signed an
agreement for the remediation of two spent nuclear fuel storage basins located in the 100 K-Area
of the Hanford Site. This agreement required the Department to retrieve and package for
disposal over 2,100 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and to remove the estimated 28.5 cubic
meters of radioactive sludge and place it in interim storage pending future treatment. After the
fuel was removed in 2004, the agreement was amended to treat the sludge prior to interim
storage and ship it to a national repository for disposal. The sludge is classified as remotehandled
transuranic waste and will need to be packaged in a configuration that will meet the
acceptance criteria for the Department's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
