Gaps in safety assurance documents filed by Bechtel National are not serious enough to imperil the schedule for the Waste Treatment Plant the company is building at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, the head of DOE’s Hanford Office of River Protection said Monday.
“No, I don’t think it’s a significant issue,” ORP Manager Brian Vance said during a question-and-answer session at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Ariz.
The Energy Department has a high standard for quality assurance, and in this case directly called upon Bechtel to address questions about documentation for steel quality at the plant, Vance said.
“In this case I think we are going to find, and the evaluation has already been ongoing … that paperwork will be identified” and the issue will be closed without risk to the project or schedule, Vance said.
In a March 6 letter to Bechtel, DOE said records “needed to demonstrate that the important-to-safety structural steel could perform its safety function were either missing or of indeterminate quality.”
The Waste Treatment Plant will convert up to 56 million gallons of low-activity and high-level radioactive waste currently held in storage tanks into a more stable glass form for disposal. Under a federal court order, Bechtel National must start treating the low-activity radioactive waste by the end of 2023.
Bechtel and DOE expect the WTP to start treating the low-activity tank waste by the end of 2021, but the DOE letter said better documentation was needed about the steel being used in the mammoth waste plant. Bechtel has said it has documents to show DOE the structural steel will meet project requirements.
