While construction is essentially complete, serious challenges remain to starting up the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant by the end of 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The Department of Energy still estimates the direct-feed low-activity waste (DFLAW) portion of the plant will begin turning some liquid, radioactive tank waste into glass logs by December 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said in a report Monday. Under a 2020 amendment to the consent agreement governing Hanford cleanup, DOE legally has until some time in 2024 to start up DFLAW.
Meanwhile, DOE is in talks with Bechtel National on a contract extension for some DFLAW facilities that may require more work.
In short, the GAO report finds there is a high likelihood of a serious-enough glitch to result in schedule delay and increased costs. For example, DOE suggests a 90% chance “or greater of the DFLAW program experiencing inadequate replacement parts and operating supplies,” GAO said. If this happens, “the DFLAW program could be delayed by as many as 4 to 6 months and could incur a cost overrun by as much as $50 million or more.”
According to DOE reports, the agency’s “aggressive strategy with optimistic scheduling” for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) does not provide much schedule flexibility to remedy things that might go wrong, according to GAO.
“For example, according to DOE risk management documents, there is a high risk of inadequate availability of replacement parts and operating supplies for certain facilities, which will likely delay the DFLAW program schedule and increase costs,” according to a one-page summary of the report. “In addition, some equipment is likely to be obsolete by the time DFLAW facilities are operational, which would potentially delay the DFLAW program schedule and increase cost.”
Melters used to super-heat liquid waste for vitrification could pose a “single point of failure” for DFLAW, GAO said. “Once the facilities’ two melters are operational, there will be no spare melter available” for replacement until the third one is fabricated in 2025.
The likelihood that some components built years ago are now obsolete is upwards of 75%, according to GAO. For example, key low-activity waste pumping equipment and mixing vessels have been stored or installed for at least 12 years.
In March 2019, Bechtel reported to the DOE it had taken “all reasonable steps to determine the full extent to which quality problems existed,” GAO said. According to DOE officials, if challenges are not fully resolved by the time hot commissioning is scheduled to start, by Dec. 31, 2023, the costs “may fall on DOE,” GAO said in the report.
DOE and its contractors have been building the WTP since 2000. An early DOE cost estimate for the facility, which included both DFLAW and the High Level Waste Facility, was $4.3 billion, or more than $6 billion in 2022 dollars. By 2016, the estimate for the combined facility had risen to $16.8 billion, or some $18 billion in 2022 dollars, GAO wrote in its full report.
Now, DOE estimates that the DFLAW program alone will cost $8.3 billion when complete and operating, GAO said. However, the accountability office added, that figure is of “limited reliability.”
The DOE has requested Bechtel submit a proposal for a contract extension for an additional 16 months “to hire additional staff and ramp-up the plant to the full capacity operations to ensure that all facility systems and equipment function as designed,” according to GAO.
An official summary of major active contracts at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management shows that Bechtel’s WTP deal started in December 2000, runs through December 2022 and is valued at $14.7 billion.
Also, as of December 2021, “COVID-19 impacts severely stress [Bechtel’s] ability to meet the planned August 2023 start date for WTP cold commissioning operations,” according to GAO.
The DFLAW program is meant to treat much of the least radioactive portion of the 54 million gallons of liquid waste now inside 177 old and leak-prone underground storage tanks. The waste is left over from Hanford’s decades of plutonium production for U.S. nuclear weapons.
To prepare for waste treatment, “DOE is already actively addressing challenges associated with the WTP and DFLAW systems,” William (Ike) White, senior adviser to DOE’s Environmental Management office, said in comments included in the GAO report. Much headway has been made in the past two years, White said.
As for Bechtel, it continues to “to carefully monitor progress and resolve emerging challenges as we reach final stages of preparing to immobilize tank waste,” a company spokesperson said Monday in an email. “We remain committed to delivering a safe and quality plant that protects the river, our families and our community.”
