An engineering test vessel for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site arrived in Richland, Wash., near the former plutonium production plant Wednesday after a daylong barge ride from a supplier’s facility in Vancouver, Wash., the WTP prime said in a series of social media posts.
The cylindrical 16-foot-diameter by 38-foot-tall stainless steel test vessel, made by Greenberry Industrial under a contract announced last July, is the same size as the vessel that eventually will mix liquid radioactive waste in WTP’s Pretreatment Facility. The test vessel later this year will be put through its paces in the non-nuclear Full-Scale Vessel Test Facility in Richland. At the time the contract was announced, these tests were expected to conclude in 2017.
The vessel rode more than 200 miles east on the Columbia River to Richland aboard a 132-foot deck barge pushed by the 82-foot Tidewater tug Maverick, according to a Wednesday Facebook post by the Bechtel Hanford vit plant media team.
A Bechtel spokesperson declined to provide the financial terms of Greenberry’s subcontract, but said the company delivered the test vessel on time. The schedule for building the vessel that will be used for nuclear operations “will be developed as part of the new baseline after resolution of technical decisions,” the Bechtel spokesperson wrote in a Wednesday email.
DOE expects to rebaseline WTP this year.
