Hanford’s new vitrification plant begins turning legacy nuclear waste into glass

Hanford, Washington, home to the United States’ historic plutonium production complex, still holds about 56 million gallons of hazardous waste in 177 underground tanks. In October 2025 the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilisation Plant, known as the Vit Plant, achieved its first successful vitrification run, converting a portion of the waste into stable glass. Dan McDonald, the tank-waste disposal project manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology, explained that the plant now aims to produce a minimum of 21 metric tons of low-activity waste glass each day.

While the most radioactive components such as cesium and strontium are not yet being vitrified, the Department of Energy must begin high-level glass production by 2033, eventually reaching 4.2 metric tons daily. The operation fulfills obligations set out in the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement between the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology, which mandated vitrification as the preferred cleanup method. Once fully operational, the glass will be stored in engineered facilities on-site for lower-activity waste and in a deep geological repository for the most hazardous material.