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 on Sept. 21. 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 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.
The new Waste Treatment Plant lead 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.
Kim Irwin, now the deputy project director for the Waste Treatment Plant, will serve as the transition lead as McCain takes over, Reilly said. When the transition is complete, Irwin will leave Hanford to become deputy project director at the Horizon Wyfla Newydd project in Wales, where Bechtel is building a two-reactor nuclear power plant.
Felice Presti, currently manager for the direct feed low-activity waste area at Hanford’s vit plant, will take over as deputy project director. He will be replaced by Scott Monson, pretreatment and high-level waste area manager at the Waste Treatment Plant, effective Sept. 29.
Bechtel National is building and commissioning the Hanford vitrification plant at a cost expected to exceed $17 billion. The facility will convert millions of gallons of radioactive waste, left by decades of plutonium production at Hanford, into a glass form for disposal. It will initially treat low-activity radioactive waste held in underground storage tanks and is required by a federal court consent decree to be fully operational, including treating high-level radioactive waste, by 2036.
During the last year, much of the focus of the project has been on moving toward startup of low-activity waste processing. Major utility systems have been brought online and the construction, startup, and testing phases have been completed for five support buildings, including the water treatment building and the nonradioactive liquid waste disposal facility.
The Washington state Department of Ecology has approved the operating permit for one of the five main facilities, the Analytical Laboratory. The Department of Energy has approved a critical safety document, the documented safety analysis, which identifies potential hazards associated with treating low-activity tank waste and the controls Bechtel will employ to protect workers, the public, and the environment.
