PORTLAND -- Hanford's proposed radioactive waste glassification complex needs at least five melters, not the four now planned, the Hanford Advisory Board decided Thursday.

The board, which represents the entire Hanford political spectrum, will send a memo on that stance today to the Department of Energy, the state and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The action comes as DOE is preparing to sign a revised contract with Bechtel National to install two high-level radioactive waste melters and two low-level radioactive waste melters in the massive glassification complex.

The melters will mix wastes with molten glass to create glass "logs" for later burial.

Until recently, DOE and Bechtel had planned to install and operate one high-level and three low-level melters for about $5.6 billion through 2011.

Then it was found that new designs for low-level melters would enable two new-style melters to treat as much waste as three of the old melters.

But the so-called "two-and-two" setup can glassify only 19 million gallons of the wastes from Hanford's underground storage tanks by 2028, which is the legal deadline to glassify all 53 million gallons of the wastes.

That means Hanford will need other, still-undetermined, ways to treat the remaining 34 million gallons of wastes by the deadline.

State officials responded by pushing two high-level melters and three low-level melters.

Hanford officials have said the five melters could glassify 32 million gallons of wastes by 2028, leaving 21 million gallons. There are no estimates yet on what the cost would be.

HAB members were unhappy Thursday that DOE is basing its tank cleanup plan on the hope that new technologies can found in time to neutralize roughly two-thirds of the wastes by 2028.

"To sacrifice what we know will work for what we hope will work is not a good plan," said HAB member Doug Huston, of Oregon's Department of Energy.

HAB members argued it will be cheaper in the long run to install the third low-level melter as soon as possible because it will be more expensive later.

HAB member Gerald Pollet, of Heart of America Northwest, also said there is no guarantee any future technologies will be cheaper.

The Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing Hanford's cleanup, calls for the first melter to be working by 2007, and the glassification complex to be working at full speed by 2011.