The Department of Energy has yet to post a 2015 award fee scorecard for its prime contractor on the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) now under construction by Bechtel National at the Hanford Site, a former plutonium production facility near Richland, Wash.
Award fee determination scorecards are public-facing appraisals of a contractor’s performance at a DOE site. Contractors receive official grades from the department in letters delivered privately before DOE posts its evaluations publicly.
In the case of WTP, being built by Bechtel National of San Francisco and expected to come partially online in 2022 to start treating low-level liquid waste at Hanford, the delay is not entirely unexpected.
DOE last year began evaluating the contract on an annual, rather than semiannual, basis, and always expected a corresponding change in the frequency of public reports about Bechtel’s performance.
“We’re now in the timeframe for getting the award determination out,” a spokesperson for DOE’s Office of River Protection said this week about Bechtel’s award fee determination scorecard for fiscal 2015, which ended on Sept. 30. “I believe the letter went as planned, and we have 30 days from the letter to get the scorecard out. We are working on coordination for the scorecard now and should have it soon, within the next couple of weeks.”
Bechtel National holds an $11.4 billion contract to build WTP, which by a March 11 federal court order must be fully operational and treating both high- and low-level Hanford radioactive and chemical waste by 2036. DOE must modify the pact, awarded in 2000, to allow Bechtel to begin certain construction that enables low-level waste treatment by 2022. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in congressional testimony in February this would happen “soon.” In concurrent development is an official update for the agency’s 10 year-old WTP cost estimate of $12.3 billion, which includes parts of the plant not covered under Bechtel’s contract.
A Bechtel spokesperson deferred a request for comment to DOE.
Hanford Site Flips Lid
Bechtel National has flipped its lid — a 28-ton melter lid for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility (LAW). The lid, for one of the facility’s melters, had been upside down to allow for placement of the refractory, a cement-like insulation. To turn the lid right side up without damaging it, a custom-made steel frame measuring 15 feet by 25 feet was used. “It performed flawlessly,” said Bud Maple, mechanical superintendent for LAW. The lid, one of two that will be placed on LAW’s 300-ton melters, measures 12 feet wide, 22 feet long, and 16 inches thick. Numerous holes allow for piping and instrumentation into the melter, which will heat radioactive waste and glass-forming material to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit to produce a stable glass waste form. The lid will be welded onto the melter this spring and then work will begin on installing the refractory material in the second melter lid. The melters will be the largest of their kind when they are finished, about five times larger than the melters used to vitrify waste at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. LAW could be vitrifying waste by 2022.
DOE to Discuss Communication Plan for WTP
Officials with the Energy Department and Washington state will discuss their public communication plan for the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) on April 13-14 at the next public meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board, according to a notice published Thursday in the Federal Register.
The DOE-chartered group also will host, among others, a presentation on safety culture at Hanford, a former plutonium production plant that is now the country’s largest nuclear waste-cleanup project with its 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste.
The board’s various committees will also present their individual reports on topics ranging from liquid waste cleanup to public involvement at the sprawling site, which covers nearly 600 square miles just north of Richland, Wash.
DOE is in the final stages of completing a contract modification with Bechtel National that would allow the San Francisco-based WTP prime to start construction on the parts of the facility intended to start treating less-contaminated, low-level waste at Hanford by 2022. DOE officials in March said the modifications would be done “soon.” Meanwhile, a federal judge ruled earlier this month that high-level waste-treatment operations at WTP must begin by 2036.
Just after that March 11 court decision, Monica Regalbuto, DOE assistant secretary for Environmental Management, told lawmakers the total cost for WTP would increase substantially from the department’s 10 year-old estimate of $12.3 billion — still the most current public estimate available.
