Hiring has begun for the workers at the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant’s Analytical Laboratory who will support the facility’s commissioning prior to the start of operations by a 2023 federal court deadline.
A 3,300-square-foot laboratory has been established at Columbia Basin College (CBC) near Hanford in Pasco, Wash., to help prepare for work at the Hanford lab. The college facility, called the Analytical Methods Laboratory, will be used to train chemists and laboratory specialists to work at the Analytical Laboratory at the Hanford plant and to allow lab workers to refine the processes and procedures to be used during commissioning.
“Through our work here at CBC, we are preparing the future laboratory workforce for the plant’s cold and hot commissioning phases,” said Brian Reilly, vitrification plant director for contractor Bechtel National. The company and subcontractor AECOM are handling hiring.
Bechtel holds the contract to design, construct, and then commission the nearly $17 billion plant, first with a nonradioactive waste simulant and then actual radioactive waste. Once commissioning is completed, an operating contractor will take over, initially treating only Hanford’s low-activity radioactive waste.
The Waste Treatment Plant ultimately will convert into glass a large portion of 56 million gallons of low-activity and high-level radioactive waste stored in underground tanks at Hanford. The material is the byproduct of decades of plutonium production for the nation’s nuclear deterrent.
Hiring and training is currently in an early phase, with about 40 workers are expected to be brought on at the lab for commissioning, according to Hanford officials. The workers could be retained by the operating contractor. At the college they will work and train with waste simulants on equipment that Bechtel plans to eventually transfer to the Waste Treatment Plant for use with radioactive material.
The Analytical Laboratory at Hanford will analyze about 3,000 samples each year, many of them tank waste samples to help prepare the “recipe” with the precise ratio of ingredients needed for each vitrification batch. Sampling also will be done to confirm quality and process controls during the vitrification process.
