Bechtel National can at last start work that could allow the Waste Treatment Plant it is building to by 2022 start processing 56 million gallons of Cold War-era liquid waste stored at the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Energy Department announced late Friday.
The update came in the form of a contract modification DOE and its contractor have been negotiating for more than two years. The exact value of the modification was not disclosed, but DOE said in a press release the work just authorized will increase the total cost of the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) by at least $4.5 billion, to $16.8 billion.
Bechtel National’s WTP prime contract, awarded in 2000 and modified since, makes up the bulk of those costs at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. Prior to the modification, the contract was valued at roughly $11.5 billion. DOE had not posted the contract modification online as of Sunday. The modification will include specific financial and performance terms.
At one point, WTP was to begin treating both Hanford’s sludgy, more radioactive high-level waste and briny, less-radioactive low-activity waste by the end of the decade. However, DOE in 2012 halted much of the work related to high-level waste after a whistleblower for a WTP subcontractor raised safety concerns about the multibillion-dollar facility.
DOE and Bechtel National subsequently developed an approach called Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste, whereby the less-radioactive waste could be piped directly into WTP years before the contractor switches on high-level waste processing. That meant reconfiguring the site’s supporting infrastructure to initially support low-activity-only operations, which in turn required the major contract modification just announced. While it negotiated with DOE, Bechtel continued work on WTP wherever it could.
For example, the company this year completed a 60-percent design review for the Effluent Management Facility that will treat very slightly radioactive water left over from low-activity waste treatment.
WTP must start treating all Hanford waste by 2036, a federal judge ruled in March.
