The general manager of Waste Treatment Completion Co., the new subcontractor for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state, is on medical leave.
Acting general manager Mike Costas is filling in for general manager Scott Oxenford. Costas previously served as the manager of functions for the Waste Treatment Plant, which included engineering, quality, automation, procurements, and safeguard and security, according to WTP construction prime Bechtel National.
The Waste Treatment Plant is being built to convert up to 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste stored in underground tanks at Hanford into a stable glass form for permanent storage.
In January, Bechtel National and its primary subcontractor, AECOM, announced the creation of Waste Treatment Completion Co. as a new subcontractor for construction, start-up, and commissioning of the vitrification plant. About 1,370 of the 3,000 vitrification plant workers were transferred to the new company, led by Bechtel manager Oxenford. The new company “better supports fulfilling our contract requirement to provide a trained work force and supporting management systems that can be turned over to a future operating contractor,” said Peggy McCullough, Bechtel project director for the plant, in January.
The arrangement has drawn scrutiny from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who in a June letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry wondered about Bechtel becoming “a contractor to itself” on the Waste Treatment Plant.
Officials at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state have been alerted to the recent discovery of some radioactive bird feces.
The contaminated bird droppings were discovered during a routine radiation survey in Hanford’s waste tank farms, according to an Aug. 23 Energy Department Occurrence Reporting and Processing System report. The radioactivity reading on the substance, which was found on top of Verification Tank C, was 85,000 disintegrations per minute (dpm)/100 square centimeters for beta/gamma radiation and 56 dpm/100 cm2 for alpha radiation.
Workers then carried out decontamination and disposal of the material, according to the ORPS report.
“This isn’t an unknown phenomenon; there have been similar occurrences at Hanford in the past with mud swallows and rabbits,” a Hanford spokesperson told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing by email.
