Bechtel National is assigning a new project director for the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) it is building at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state as it moves toward a new phase of work, the partial startup of waste treatment as soon as 2022.
Peggy McCullough, the contractor’s current WTP project director, told plant staff Dec. 8 she is taking a new assignment to lead Bechtel’s nuclear security business line at company headquarters in Reston, Va.
Brian Reilly, a Bechtel senior vice president since 2010, will take over leadership of the Hanford vitrification plant starting Dec. 20. Since 2014 he has led the $6.5 billion design and construction of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The Oak Ridge plant will replace aging nuclear security facilities that process uranium. Under Reilly’s leadership, 90 percent of the UPF design has been completed and construction is expected to start next year. Before his work at the Uranium Processing Facility, Reilly was program manager for the international environmental business line in Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure.
“Brian’s decades of experience in construction and startup of commercial and government nuclear projects will be a great asset at WTP as the project continues its crucial next phase,” said Barbara Rusinko, president of Bechtel’s government services and nuclear power global business unit.
The Waste Treatment Plant, which is expected to cost more than $17 billion, is being built to treat up to 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste now held in underground tanks at the former plutonium production complex.
McCullough, who has led the project for nearly four and a half years, has positioned the project well to turn over a fully functioning Low-Activity Waste Facility to the Department of Energy by 2022, Rusinko said. Unresolved technical issues have since 2012 delayed work on key parts of the vitrification plant that will process high-level radioactive waste. As a result, DOE adopted a plan to start treating low-activity radioactive waste while construction continues elsewhere at the plant and progresses toward the federal court-ordered full start of operations in 2036.
McCullough, the longest-serving Bechtel project director at the vit plant, took the job as new plans were being developed in response to technical issues raised by former Energy Secretary Steven Chu and as the project faced issues initially raised in whistleblower lawsuits concerning its nuclear safety culture. “She righted the ship and got the whole project on track,” said Carl Adrian, president of the Tri-City Development Council. “In my mind she was a very strong leader.”
McCoullough told staff in a Dec, 8 memo that in her years at Hanford, vit plant workers have transformed the project’s nuclear safety and quality culture and met all milestones to date in Bechtel’s revised contract. They also have nearly resolved the technical issues raised by Chu on the High-Level Waste Facility and Pretreatment Facility and have significantly shifted efforts elsewhere at the plant from engineering, procurement, and construction to startup and commissioning, she said.
Bechtel’s contract was revised in December 2016 to align with the Department of Energy’s goal to start operating the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant to treat low-activity radioactive waste as soon as 2022. Among the new milestones Bechtel has met are final assembly of both melters and installation of the caustic scrubber for the Low-Activity Waste Facility.
McCullough’s tenure largely coincided with that of Kevin Smith, who recently retired as manager of the Department of Energy Office of River Protection, which oversaw the WTP project at Hanford. McCullough noted that Reilly will begin work shortly after new manager Brian Vance took over leadership of the office Nov. 6. “I expect they will continue the positive momentum we’ve built and identify ways to enhance our efforts,” she told staff.
McCullough, a Bechtel senior vice president, will replace John Howanitz in her new assignment. Howanitz is a 35-year Bechtel veteran with wide experience in energy infrastructure and national security sites, according to his biography. Bechtel indicated it would make an announcement about his next move.
In McCullough’s new position she will oversee Bechtel interests at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee; Pantex Plant in Texas; and various naval nuclear laboratory sites.