In what appears to be a sign of progress, Bechtel National has filed a revised preliminary documented safety analysis to the Department of Energy for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant’s High-Level Waste Facility. The document is intended to support the resumption of procurement and construction on the facility, according to a newly released weekly site report of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
The document is based on new hazards analysis for the plant.
Bechtel is building the Waste Treatment Plant to convert up to 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste, left behind by decades of plutonium production at the Washington state facility, into a glass form for permanent storage.
At one point, DOE and Bechtel thought WTP would begin treating both high-level and low-activity waste around 2020. But the agency halted much of the work on WTP’s high-level waste facilities in 2012 after a whistleblower at a Bechtel subcontractor raised safety concerns about the proposed technical approach for high-level waste treatment.
The Energy Department is now pursuing a revised approach that would treat low-activity waste first within a handful of years, called Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste, or DFLAW.
Kevin Smith, who retired as manager of DOE Office of River Protection at the end of September, said shortly beforehand that technical issues could be resolved by the end of the year.
The Department of Energy has established a special projects unit to focus on completing the Waste Treatment Plant, though details on its scope and staffing remain difficult to ascertain. The department did not respond by deadline to a request for comment this week.
Roger Jarrell, senior adviser to the secretary of energy for environmental management, said in September the department had brought back longtime DOE hand Dae Chung from Samsung to head the new special projects office. One industry source said Wednesday that he understood that Chung will focus exclusively on Hanford issues during his first six months. This includes the latest plans for WTP.
At least one industry source and a Washington state Department of Ecology representative said this week they hadn’t heard much about the unit’s early activity.
Under a federal court order, full operations of the WTP must begin by the end of 2036. The plant must legally begin treating Hanford’s briny, less-radioactive low-level waste by 2023, though Bechtel would forfeit millions of dollars in fees if processing does not begin in 2022.
