The Washington state Ecology Department on Monday opened a 60-day public comment period for locals to weigh in on a permit modification Bechtel National and the Energy Department need to start treating radioactive waste at the Hanford Site as soon as 2022.
If granted, the modification will smooth the way for Bechtel, prime contractor on the Waste Treatment Plant under construction at Hanford, to build the Effluent Management Facility (EMF) at the former plutonium production site. The EMF, projected to be up and running in 2019, will treat waste byproducts created from the eventual solidification of Hanford’s low-activity waste into more easily storable glass cylinders.
The state will host a public meeting on the proposed permit modification on Dec. 14 in Richland, Wash., according to the notice from Ecology. The public comment period runs to Jan. 27. This is the first of three permit modifications Bechtel and DOE need to complete the Effluent Management Facility and would, if approved as expected, allow the company to begin more substantial construction on EMF: laying a foundation and building the facility’s walls, for example.
So far, he company has done only site preparation, including laying down a concrete mud mat to keep construction workers out of the mud, and erecting some of the steel reinforcement bars that eventually will help hold EMF’s concrete walls together.
The final WTP permit modification Bechtel needs is scheduled to be submitted for state review in fall 2017.
In a switch from its original plan for Hanford waste treatment, the Energy Department and its contractors will solidify Hanford’s more voluminous, less-radioactive low-activity waste before treating the sludgier, more-radioactive high-activity waste. In 2012, citing safety and technical concerns, DOE slowed work on the Waste Treatment Plant’s High-Level Waste Facility. A federal judge in April ruled high-level waste treatment must begin by 2036.
Bechtel National’s Waste Treatment Plant prime contract, awarded in 2000 and modified since, is worth just over $11 billion. DOE must modify the deal again before Bechtel can build the Effluent Management Facility and tweak the Waste Treatment Plant to operate for low-activity-only waste treatment. That long-expected, long-delayed contract modification is expected sometime before Dec. 31. The Waste Treatment Plant’s total estimated cost of more than $12 billion is expected to rise substantially.
