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Bechtel National chose an executive who led construction of two new nuclear power reactors in Georgia to temporarily run the Waste Immobilization and Treatment Plant project at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, the company said late Thursday.
Effective immediately John Atwell is the acting project director for the Waste Immobilization and Treatment Plant (WTP), filling the gap created by the recent, sudden death of project director Valerie McCain, Bechtel said in a press release.
Atwell is a Bechtel principal vice president and for the past two years was project director for the Vogtle Units 3&4 completion project for Georgia Power.
Atwell has more than 40 years of managerial experience leading engineering and oversight of big projects, including nuclear power plants, nuclear and high-hazard facilities, Bechtel said in the press release. Atwell served as manager of functions and operations for Bechtel’s Nuclear, Security, and Environment business unit from 2020 to 2021.
Bechtel took over construction of the two reactors being built by Southern Co. utility Georgia Power in 2017. The units are located alongside two of the utility’s existing reactors in Waynesboro, Ga., Waynesboro is roughly 47 miles from Aiken, S.C., a neighbor of the DOE’s Savannah River Site. The facilities are close enough that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-required emergency planning document notes a major accident at Vogtle could have environmental impacts within the boundary of the Savannah River Site.
Vogtle 3 and 4 represent the first new commercial power reactors built in the United States in decades. Vogtle 3 recently started generating electricity and connected to the power grid, Georgia Power said in a press release, in the past week.
A day before Thursday’s announcement, a Bechtel spokesperson said, and DOE confirmed, the company’s $15-billion construction contract with DOE stipulates the federal agency must approve any interim replacement manager at Hanford’s big liquid-waste treatment center.
McCain, who had 30 years of nuclear and environment industry experience, died Sunday March 26. McCain was diagnosed with cancer only a few weeks prior to her death, a family member said in a social media post.
McCain led the vitrification plant project from October 2018 until March 2023. The project is designed to convert all of Hanford’s high-level waste, and much of its low-level waste, into glass logs suitable for emplacement in a deep underground repository. DOE and the contractor had through most of last year been shooting for a December 2023 startup, but the current projection is by 2025.