The Department of Energy plans to hold off sending outside federal low-level radioactive wastes to Hanford until probably next fall.

That is several months later than DOE's previous commitment to delay these waste shipments.

For many years, Hanford has accepted and buried some low-level radioactive wastes from other DOE sites. Low-level wastes are mildly contaminated items such as clothes, rubble, tools and chopped-up equipment.

Then, last February, DOE announced that Hanford and the Nevada Test Site would accept and store all low-level radioactive wastes produced at other DOE sites.

At the same time, Hanford was picked to accept and store much of the mixed low-level wastes produced at other DOE sites -- which it officially has not done before. There has been speculation some mixed wastes have ended up in west-central Hanford's low-level waste burial trenches. Mixed wastes are low-level radioactive wastes that also contain hazardous chemicals.

The idea of Hanford accepting other sites' wastes while dealing with its own overwhelming cleanup problems has irked the state and many Hanford constituencies.

The state Department of Ecology and Attorney General Christine Gregoire are exploring somehow legally linking Hanford's acceptance of other federal wastes to DOE's progress in building and operating plants to convert the site's highly radioactive tank wastes into glass.

That attempt is still unresolved.

The state cannot legally regulate federal low-level radioactive wastes. But it can do so if hazardous chemicals are present in those wastes.

Several months ago, DOE agreed not to send any outside federal wastes from any new sites to Hanford until it had selected a corporate team to build the glassification plants. DOE picked a team led by Bechtel National and Washington International Group earlier this month -- meeting the agency's commitment.

But on Dec. 8, DOE's cleanup czar Carolyn Huntoon sent a letter to Tom Fitzsimmons, director of Washington's Department of Ecology, that said the agency does not plan to ship any new low-level or mixed wastes to Hanford until an environmental study on all of the site's solid radioactive and mixed wastes is completed. No new wastes will be shipped until a formal decision dealing with all of Hanford's solid wastes -- meaning predominantly mixed, low-level and transuranic -- is filed in the Federal Registry, the letter said.

The state expects that to happen next fall, said Ecology Department spokeswoman Sheryl Hutchison.

Huntoon wrote: "This commitment is intended to show the department's good faith in addressing the state's concerns and to increase the state's confidence in the department's efforts to demonstrate real progress in cleaning up the Hanford site."

However, Huntoon's letter elsewhere said: "Should any unexpected circumstances arise that might cause our plans to change in this regard, the department commits to consult with the state of Washington before proceeding with any such shipment."

While all these agreements address shipping wastes to Hanford from new federal sites, they have never addressed the volumes shipped from DOE sites that currently send wastes to Hanford. Traditionally, one-third to one-half of the 5,000 to 6,600 cubic meters of low-level wastes buried annually at Hanford have come from other DOE sites.

But in early 1999, DOE began shipping slightly contaminated uranium-containing rubble to Hanford from a Pennsylvania uranium fuel processing site cleanup project.

That ballooned the amount of low-level wastes that Hanford buried in fiscal 2000 to 7,408 cubic meters, with 84 percent coming from outside of Hanford. However, the Pennsylvania shipments are expected to end in the near future.