The Department of Energy has dropped a proposal for a less expensive alternative to treating and disposing of some of Hanford's radioactive tank waste.

The alternative could have saved as much as $459 million, according to figures in an earlier Government Accountability Office report, but Hanford officials were unable to win the regulatory support of the states of Washington and New Mexico. About $40 million has been spent on the project.

Less than two months ago, DOE released a draft environmental impact study that included the less expensive option of sending some of Hanford's tank waste to a federal repository in New Mexico rather than glassifying it at the $12.2 billion vitrification plant being built at Hanford.

But Friday, DOE published a notice in the Federal Register saying it was removing the option of sending waste from certain tanks to the federal repository in New Mexico from the draft environmental study.

The study, called the Hanford Draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement, will lead to final decisions on how to treat Hanford's 53 million gallons of radioactive waste that have been held in 177 underground tanks. Work began on the document in 2003 and the public comment period on it continues through March 19.

Officials at Hanford have said for more than five years that waste in at least eight and possibly as many as 20 underground tanks could be disposed of safely at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

That would not only save money, but empty aging leak-prone tanks sooner and reduce the amount of waste that needs to be processed at the vitrification plant, they said.

The vitrification plant was not planned to be large enough to treat all of Hanford's tank waste in a reasonable time, and treating all the waste that some officials wanted to send to New Mexico would take the vit plant three years.

The state of Washington has had legal and technical concerns about the plan to send some waste to New Mexico for disposal, the Washington Department of Ecology said in a statement published with the DOE notification in the Federal Register.

And the New Mexico Environment Department has refused to accept Hanford tank waste at the federal repository there, saying the waste is legally high-level radioactive waste, not transuranic waste.

The federal repository in New Mexico accepts transuranic waste, which for Hanford is typically waste contaminated with plutonium. But it can include other elements with atomic numbers greater than uranium, which are elements usually created in nuclear reactors.

Waste in Hanford's underground tanks is left from the chemical processing of irradiated fuel rods to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. The waste that Hanford officials had proposed disposing of as transuranic waste included the contents of at least eight tanks that hold waste produced during a final purification step of plutonium material in the 1940s and 1950s after high-level radioactive waste already had been removed, DOE said earlier.

"The department has continued its analysis of the proposed alternatives in the Hanford Tank Closure and Waste Management EIS since its release at the end of October," DOE said in a statement released Friday in response to Herald questions.

"Based on that analysis, we have determined that managing tank waste as transuranic waste and shipping it to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is no longer DOE's preferred course of action," it said.

In addition, DOE spokeswoman Chari Davenport in Washington, D.C., said the decision was made that the waste should be treated at the vitrification plant "due to uncertainties in waste classification." Tank waste now legally classified as high-level waste would have to be reclassified as transuranic waste to be sent to New Mexico.

The notice in the Federal Register also made clear that DOE would not send certain low-level waste called greater-than-class-C waste to Hanford for disposal at least until the vitrification plant is operating.

No decision on where to send that waste has been made. But a separate environmental study on disposing of that waste is being prepared, and Hanford is one site that has been under consideration.

As part of a proposed settlement of a lawsuit brought by the state of Washington against DOE over missed deadlines to empty Hanford tanks and treat the waste for disposal, DOE promised that certain low-level radioactive waste that had earlier been planned to be moved to Hanford would not be sent at least until the vit plant is operating. That was included in the draft tank waste study, and the modification published in the Federal Register on Friday adds greater-than-class-C to the types of waste included in the moratorium.

Comments on the draft environmental study may be sent to Mary Beth Burandt, EIS Document Manager, DOE Draft TC&WM EIS Comments, Office of River Protection, P.O. Box 1178, Richland, 99352. Comments also can be submitted by e-mail to TC&WMEIS@saic.com.