The Department of Energy is in no rush to transfer operation of the new Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant to the new liquid waste contractor from the builder of the multi-billion facility, the Hanford Site Advisory Board heard Wednesday.
Bechtel National, which in December 2000 acquired the contract to build the plant to convert liquid radioactive waste into a glass form, could receive a contract modification with DOE to stay on for up to 18 months. That was the update shared with the Hanford Advisory Board from Mat Irwin, DOE’s assistant manager for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The facility is sometimes called the vitrification plant.
Bechtel is scheduled to start hot commissioning, the transition to actual radioactive liquid waste from a simulant meant to mimic the tank waste, in late July and early August, Irwin said.
The Bechtel construction contract, now valued at $16 billion, was previously scheduled to expire in September 2024, according to a DOE summary of major contracts for the Office of Environmental Management.
DOE and Bechtel are looking at a contract modification that allows Bechtel and its WTC affiliate “to operate the DFLAW [Direct-Feed-Low-Activity-Waste] facility for up to 18 months at the discretion of DOE,” Irwin told the board.
DOE stressed that an extension has not been finalized yet but is in negotiations.
“We do intend for them [Bechtel’s people] to operate it for some period,” Irwin said Wednesday. The previously reported timeline was for Bechtel as builder to run the plant for six months before handing it over to BWX Technologies-led Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C), he added.
H2C took over in February as liquid waste contractor at Hanford. It was the winning bidder of a contract, potentially worth $45 billion over 15 years, to oversee Hanford’s 56 million of radioactive and chemical waste left over from decades of plutonium production.
“We pick the right time and place to perform that nominal six-month transition from Bechtel over to H2C,” Irwin said. He expects the actual handover will be “somewhere in the middle there,” between six and 18 months.
H2C is already running other aspects of tank waste management at Hanford at Richland, Wash.
On another topic, Irwin said DOE has finished delivering 2,000 gallons of liquid tank waste, which will be grouted as part of the Test Bed Initiative, at EnergySolutions in Clive, Utah and Waste Control Specialists in Andrews, Texas.
The empty “totes” or containers used to hold the waste during transport are on the way back to Hanford for storage “as we speak,” Irwin said. He added there are no immediate plans to re-use the totes.
On another subject, Irwin was asked about the status of management of the Hanford Site. DOE’s longtime Hanford Site manager Brian Vance left the department in April. “DOE is working on finding the permanent replacement for the Hanford manager,” Irwin said.
The current highest-ranking fed at Hanford is acting deputy manager Brian Harkins.