Fowler General Construction Inc. of Richland, Washington, received three Hanford contracts totaling almost $19 million from tank farms prime Washington River Protection Solutions.
One $5.3 million contract is to construct a 17,600-square-foot office building at Hanford’s 222-S laboratory. The laboratory provides analytical support for the tank farms.
The other two contracts cover $13.5 million are for projects at Hanford’s Effluent Treatment Facility, which stores and treats wastewater created by several Hanford remediation activities.
One of the latter two contracts calls for designing and building a system to remove a hazardous chemical, acetonitrile, from the liquid waste generated during glassification at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant: the planned vitrification facility that will turn Hanford’s 55-million gallons of liquid waste into storable, glass-like cylinders.
The other effluent treatment contract calls for expanding the facility’s existing load-in station and to construct a backup load-in station for waste tanker trucks. While most of the wastewater sent to the facility is pumped through pipes, a smaller amount will be delivered by tanker truck.
The Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) is in charge of Hanford’s 177 underground tanks holding 56 million gallons of highly radioactive wastes.
“Upgrades to these facilities will help ensure critical infrastructure is in place to treat tank waste through the direct-feed low-activity waste program at Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant,” said Delmar Noyes, the Department of Energy’s tank farms manager, in a press release.
The low-activity portion of the Waste Treatment Plant is scheduled to go online in 2023, the same year that the three Fowler projects are supposed to be finished.
