The Hanford Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) will have a new Bechtel National project director as it moves toward the partial startup of waste treatment as soon as 2022.
Peggy McCullough, the current project director for the contractor, told plant staff Friday that she is taking a new assignment to lead Bechtel’s Nuclear Security and Operations business line at the company’s operational headquarters in Reston, Va.
Brian Reilly, a Bechtel senior vice president since 2010, will take over leadership of the Hanford vitrification plant starting Dec. 20.
Since 2014 he has led the $6.5 billion design and construction project for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The Oak Ridge facility will replace aging nuclear security facilities that process uranium. Under Reilly’s leadership, 90 percent of the facility’s design has been completed and construction is expected to start next year.
“Brian’s decades of experience in construction and startup of commercial and government nuclear projects will be a great asset at WTP as the project continues its crucial next phase,” said Barbara Rusinko, president of Bechtel’s government services and nuclear power global business unit.
McCullough, who has led the vit plant project for nearly four and a half years, has positioned the project to turn over a fully functioning Low Activity Waste Facility to the Department of Energy by 2022, Rusinko said.
Work has been delayed since 2012 on key parts of the vitrification plant that will handle high level radioactive waste because of unresolved technical issues. As a result, DOE changed course, adopting a plan to start treating low activity radioactive waste at the plant while construction continues elsewhere at the plant and progresses toward the full start of operations in 2036. The plant, which is expected to cost more than $17 billion, is being built to treat up to 56 million gallons of waste now held in underground tanks.
