One of the Department of Energy’s major contractors has sealed a cooperative agreement with a company offering a “drillhole” method for disposal of nuclear waste.
Under the memorandum of agreement announced Monday, Bechtel will offer project management, business, and other support to assist Deep Isolation in selling its technology to the Energy Department and other potential customers in the United States and abroad.
“Deep geologic disposal is the scientific consensus for permanently removing and disposing used nuclear fuel and high-level waste from their current locations around the country,” James Taylor, general manager for Bechtel’s Environmental business branch, said in a press release. “We have long-term expertise in design, engineering and licensing, as well as the boots-on-the-ground experience with the everyday challenges of cleaning up radioactive waste.”
Bechtel is building the Waste Treatment Plant to process a large portion of 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state. It is also part of the liquid waste management team at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which on April 1 received an 18-month contract extension worth about $750 million.
Deep Isolation was established in 2016 in Berkeley, Calif. It is marketing a “directional drilling” technology for disposal of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste. Under that approach, 18-inch holes would be drilled thousands of feet into stable rock. The vertical holes would ease into a horizontal space where the material itself would be deposited.
