Bechtel National is bringing on a new project director for the Waste Treatment Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, employees were told Friday. Brian Reilly, who joined the project last December, will be replaced by Valerie McCain.
Reilly has been reassigned to the position of project director for the Vogtle 3 and 4 nuclear power reactors that Bechtel is building in Georgia. Reilly said when he arrived at Hanford he planned to see the WTP project through to startup of the direct feed low-activity waste component, which is required by a federal court consent decree to be operational by 2023. “While that was both my and Bechtel’s plan, the situation has changed, and I go where my company decides I need to be,” he said in a message to project employees.
McCain “will build upon what we’ve achieved so far this year. She has a diversity of experience across industries, countries and customers in high-hazard construction efforts,” Reilly wrote.
McCain is the project manager at the Uranium Processing Facility being built at DOE’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, the same job Reilly held before he came to the Hanford vitrification plant project. No specific date for her start at Hanford was immediately available, but it is expected to be in October.
McCain is an environmental scientist by training and has worked at Bechtel for 28 years, assigned to projects in North America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East. She has held leadership positions at the U.S. Army’s Pueblo, Colo., chemical weapons disposal plant and an aluminum smelter modernization project in Canada.
Bechtel National is building and commissioning the Hanford vitrification plant at a cost expected to exceed $17 billion. It will initially treat low-activity radioactive waste held in underground storage tanks and is required by a federal court to consent decree to be fully operating, including treating high-level radioactive waste, in 2036.
