Bechtel National earned 70%, or $5.54 million out of a potential $7.88 million, for its work on the Waste Treatment Plant at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state in 2020.
That is according to a fee scorecard released this week by the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management for the 2020 calendar year.
It is slightly better than the 64% or $5 million awarded to Bechtel for its performance during the 2019 calendar year, and better still than 2018, when the company won 48% or $3.77 million of the potential total. In all three years, Bechtel was eligible for about $7.8 million
“This is our second highest award fee received to date,” said Valerie McCain, Bechtel’s project manager for the vitrification plant, said in a Monday email to employees, adding that it came during the “unexpected and unprecedented conditions caused by the pandemic.”
This time around, Bechtel’s rankings for the six subjective fee areas ranged from a low of 61% for project performance to 92% for its work on the high-level waste facility.
The scorecard said Bechtel has completed design reviews for the high-level waste facility. In addition, the contractor completed moving all systems in the Low-Activity Waste Facility and the Effluent Management Facility “from construction to startup testing” keeping the plant on pace to meet its consent decree milestone to begin converting low-activity tank waste into a glass form Dec. 31, 2023.
Some of the areas for improvement the DOE wants to see include a more effective risk program and “maturation” of the operations culture.
“As a continuous learning organization, we have areas for improvement … and will build on these areas in the coming year,” McCain wrote in her email.
Bechtel started work on the Waste Treatment Plant, expected to be the largest radioactive waste facility in the world, in December 2000.
The going since then has often been rough.
In a report last year, the Government Accountability Office last year said the ultimate cost of completing the Waste Treatment Plant could run between $19 billion and $30 million, in addition to the $11 billion already spent.
In the same report, Congress’ investigative arm said that DOE and its contractor were still grappling with what to do about a pre-treatment facility for high-level waste after the agency halted construction on it in 2012 due to technical challenges. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board does not consider the issues resolved and government reports have questioned if the pretreatment facility can be completed by 2031.
