Largest U.S. nuclear waste melter completed at Hanford

Hanford is now home to the largest nuclear waste melter ever build in the United States.

The Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection and Bechtel National Inc. announced employees finished the assembly of the melter which will be located at the Vit Plant. The 300-ton nuclear waste melter is one of two located at the plant.

Construction crews have now started working on the second melter.

The large devices will heat Hanford low-activity tank waste with glass-forming materials to 2,100 degrees in a process called vitrification, before the mixture is poured into containers for permanent storage.

When the plant is fully operational, the two devices will produce 30 tons of glass daily, ten times the capacity of the melter in operation at DOE Savannah River Site's Defense Waste Processing Facility in South Carolina.