by John Stang, Washington State Standard
October 15, 2025
Sixteen years after the original deadline, the Hanford nuclear reservation in south-central Washington state is finally converting its worst radioactive waste into a benign glass.
Glassification began Saturday evening, but the U.S. Department of Energy did not announce that the process was underway until Wednesday.
“As the world’s largest radioactive waste treatment facility, the plant’s successful startup represents a crucial achievement at this scale, demonstrating the ability to stabilize nuclear waste for safe, long-term disposal,” said Ray Geimer, Department of Energy’s Hanford manager.
Lawmakers in Washington’s congressional delegation applauded the milestone.
“This is just the start and we’ve still got a ways to go before we’re anywhere near done, but today’s success is worth celebrating — let’s make glass!” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., called it an “incredible technical and logistical accomplishment.”
Hanford is expected to take a year to gradually crank up the volume of waste being glassified until the first plant reaches full operation.
Right now, the plant is processing an initial 25,000-gallon batch of waste. The waste goes through two huge melters that combine it with glass flakes and heat the mixture to 2,100 degrees. This yields melted glass that is poured into huge storage cylinders to cool and harden.
The U.S. government set up Hanford in 1943 to create plutonium for the nation’s atomic bombs. That work created billions of gallons of chemical and radioactive waste. The worst 56 million gallons of the waste were pumped into 177 underground tanks.
About a third of those tanks leak. At least a million gallons of radioactive liquid have leaked into the ground, seeping into an aquifer 200 feet below and then into the Columbia River, roughly seven miles away.
Hanford began construction of a plant to begin treating the waste in 2002. That plant was originally legally scheduled to go online in 2009 — 16 years ago.
This first plant is supposed to take care of 40-50% of the tanks’ low-activity wastes. The master plan has been to build two low-activity glassification plants, plus a third to handle 5 million to 6 million gallons of high-level radioactive wastes.
The entire project’s original budget in 2002 was $4 billion, which has grown to roughly $30 billion today. The first low-activity waste plant cost slightly more than $9 billion.
Hanford’s current legal target calls for glassifying all tank wastes by 2052. The U.S. Department of Energy has internally moved those targets back to 2069, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office.
Last year, the feds and state agreed to look at possibly encasing some low-activity wastes in grout — a cement-like substance.
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