The Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is facing a new round of troubles, with DOE opening an official investigation into safety aspects of the plant’s design while acknowledging yesterday that the project is likely to go well above its current cost estimate of approximately $12.2 billion. In a letter sent to WTP contractor Bechtel National late last week, obtained by WC Monitor, DOE’s Office of Health, Safety and Security said it is launching an investigation into “potential nuclear safety noncompliances with … processes for designing, procuring and installing Structures, Systems and Components used in the construction of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, particularly for those SSCs whose design have not been verified.”
According to DOE, the investigation was prompted in response to a request made by an employee of the Department’s Office of River Protection at Hanford, which oversees the WTP project. In a statement yesterday, Bechtel National said, “A question was raised about how our evolving design aligns with the preliminary safety basis documents. The DOE-HSS Office of Enforcement informed BNI that it intends to conduct an investigation of our design, procurement, and construction processes. We welcome their input in validating our processes and/or providing recommendations for improvement. The design is incomplete and will be for another two years. The Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis is preliminary and will be until commissioning, at which point we will have a final Documented Safety Analysis that will fully align with the design.”
The DOE investigation comes as the Department is acknowledging that the project is facing a new round of cost increases. Yesterday, DOE officially released the results of a Construction Project Review conducted on the WTP that found that the project is at risk of almost $1 billion in additional costs. The CPR team also found that the projected cost increase could be "partially offset" by $350 million using a phased commissioning approach, but noted its report that “it must be understood that these costs do not go away—they are merely being transferred out of project space. These activities, and the costs and resources needed to accomplish them, must still be made available within the overall program at ORP.” In a conference call with reporters yesterday, acting DOE cleanup chief David Huizenga said that the project’s new price tag will be determined, in part, by the funding level provided by Congress going forward. “We really aren’t going to have a real clear sense of how much this project will cost us until we reach a clear understanding with our appropriators of what kind of sustained funding levels they may be able to commit to or at least to notionally agree to over the next few years. So it’ll all be done over the next few months, I presume, as we continue to work with Congress,” he said.
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