![]() ![]() ![]() The two melters are expected to have lifespans of about five years. Hanford plans to start testing its second low-activity-waste melter in a few weeks. These tanks are arguably the most radiologically and chemically contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere. The tanks hold more than 100 types of deadly chemicals and highly radioactive wastes left over from its manufacturing of plutonium for atomic bombs during World War II and the Cold War. Hanford, which ended production in 1987, has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in 177 leak-prone underground tanks. It held slightly less than 1,800 gallons of cooled, greenish glass weighing 6.8 metric tons. Hanford’s first melter poured its first glass in late October while the first 7.5-foot-tall, 4-foot-in-diameter stainless-steel canister was filled last week. Hanford is expected to begin melting radioactive wastes together with glass flakes between April and June 2025 at a rate of 21 metric tons a day, Vance said. “It was not obvious to everyone except this team that we’d be here today,” said the federal Department of Energy’s Hanford Manager Brian Vance at a Monday ceremony at the site’s low-activity-waste vitrification plant. Hanford, a decommissioned production site of nuclear bomb materials, filled its first canister with melted non-radioactive glass last week, a process called “vitrification,” the site’s leaders announced Monday. The Hanford nuclear reservation is on track to start encasing huge volumes of its worst radioactive wastes in glass within 18 months, marking progress on a cleanup project that is 16 years behind its original schedule. There’s also a special deduction for sales of family-owned businesses. Exempt from the tax are sales of real estate, retirement accounts and livestock and timber for ranching or farming. In March, the Washington Supreme Court upheld the law, which puts a 7% tax on profits from the sale of stocks and bonds exceeding $250,000. The additional dollars are then expected to go into a state account that pays for school construction. ![]() The first $500 million of the tax is directed toward a state fund that pays for K-12 education and child-care programs. Legislators in the coming session will write supplemental budgets that make adjustments to the state’s two-year spending blueprints. That number could fluctuate a little before lawmakers return in January for the annual legislative session, according to spokesperson Mikhail Carpenter. The DOR estimates $889 million was collected out of a total of 3,765 returns, according to an agency spokesperson. Washington’s new capital gains tax has brought in nearly $900 million in its first year, according to the state Department of Revenue. ![]()
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