March 17, 2014

TECHNICAL ISSUES DELAY NEW COST/SCHEDULE ESTIMATE FOR HANFORD VIT PLANT

By ExchangeMonitor

Lingering technical issues have forced the Department of Energy to decouple, at least for now, two of the main facilities that make up the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant from the rest of project’s baseline, leaving DOE’s largest and most expensive construction project without a comprehensive cost and schedule estimate and no timeline for getting one. In a conference call with reporters yesterday, DOE cleanup chief David Huizenga said that WTP contractor Bechtel National will soon be directed to modify its efforts to rebaseline the Hanford vit plant project to only focus on the WTP’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, Analytical Laboratory and other ancillary facilities, and to leave out the WTP’s Pretreatment and High-Level Waste facilities until additional testing is completed to address the remaining technical concerns. “As concerns regarding technical issues associated with [the] Pretreatment and High-Level Waste facilities have converged, it’s become apparent that more information is necessary in order to resolve the technical issues before a comprehensive and validated project performance baseline can be completed,” Huizenga said. “What we’ll do is get a clear focus on how much it’s going to cost and what the timing is associated with the Low Activity [Waste Facility] and the balance of facilities and also the cost and schedule associated with the testing itself. As we get clearer understanding of what we need to do in Pretreatment and High-Level waste to address these concerns, we will ask them to finish the baseline.”

Huizenga acknowledged that the new approach would have “an impact” on the overall cost and schedule for the WTP, but added, “I don’t think it’s probably useful for me to engage in a lot of speculation right now.” He went on to say, “What we’re trying to do is trying to address these technical issues directly and head-on and realistically because in the end we think the shortest distance between two points is to do just that—acknowledge that there are issues, work through them methodically to have a facility that once you do start it up it doesn’t have problems and you’re not going to, in a sense, end up with more unanticipated costs through maintenance activities. We’re actually trying to find a way to build and operate this plant as efficiently as possible.”

Earlier this year, DOE had directed Bechtel National to prepare by August a new baseline for the entire WTP, currently projected to cost approximately $12 billion and to be in operation in late 2019. That direction was based on several factors, including the need to prioritize the resolution of remaining technical issues and the resumption of a flat annual funding profile of approximately $690 million. The revised approach to baselining the WTP comes after a panel of experts has validated concerns raised by a DOE scientist on the project, Don Alexander, over potential erosion and corrosion impacts on some plant components. Last fall, Alexander warned that efforts to address whether the systems to be used in WTP vessels could adequately mix waste as it moves through the plant could inadvertently exacerbate erosion issues. Alexander’s concerns were reviewed through a recently completed Differing Professional Opinion process that found the need for more testing to be performed, according to Huizenga. “One of our federal employees had some particular questions and concerns and this is the process that we have in place so if somebody has a different view on things they can pursue this mechanism to have their case be presented in a sense to a technical group of experts to help resolve it. In the end, the technical experts concluded that yes the issue that was being identified and the particular concerns being identified at this point were legitimate and needed to be acted upon so we have appropriately taken the action to do so,” Huizenga said.

DOE had previously planned to conduct a large-scale integrated test program to help resolve mixing concerns at the WTP, and now additional tests will be rolled into that program to address the erosion/corrosion issues. “The Department expects that successful completion of this large scale integrated testing and some additional testing recommended by the DPO panel to address erosion and corrosion issues will provide a higher level of confidence that the WTP can perform as originally conceived for the planned 40-year life,” Huizenga said. Such testing is likely to take “more than a year” to complete, Huizenga said, though he added, “To be honest, we don’t have a hard and fast end date on when will complete the testing.” When asked how much the test program would cost, Huizenga said he did not have a solid estimate available but “suffice it to say it’s tens of millions of dollars of testing over the next few months.”

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