The U.S. Department of Energy’s most contaminated nuclear waste complex, the 580-square-mile Hanford Site in Washington state, would receive $3.1 billion to fund cleanup by fiscal year 2025 in the proposed President Joe Biden’s federal budget released March 11. The amount exceeds a funding record already a few days earlier in a revised total approved by Congress for the current fiscal year ending September 30.
The addition of $205 million in fiscal year 2024 brought Hanford’s funding to just over $3 billion, its highest annual budget yet.
About two-thirds of the funding goes to work to prepare the Hanford Bulk Waste Treatment Plant to begin operating next year to vitrify to remove millions of gallons of nuclear and low-level chemical waste now in storage underground. The funds will also support the site’s waste storage and transport infrastructure.
Bechtel has managed the estimated $17 billion vitrification megaproject for more than 22 years.
Hanford’s initial budget request for 2024 was the Biden administration’s second in a row with a reduced total, but the cuts were less than those proposed by the Trump administration.
The Washington Department of Ecology, a regulator of the Hanford cleanup effort, says the newly added funding is needed to sustain the nation’s most complex remediation effort. From World War II to the Cold War, the site produced more than 67 tons of plutonium, generating millions of tons of radioactive and chemical waste.
The state agency estimates that Hanford needs $4.56 billion in fiscal year 2025 to meet cleanup goals set out in a federal-state agreement. “We will continue to advocate for sufficient funding in Washington, DC, and get it to a level that keeps the cleanup on track now and for years to come,” said Laura Watson, its director..
Washington Sen. Patty Murray (D) said the FY 2025 request “it shows a step in the right direction,” but he stressed the federal government’s “moral and legal obligation” to adequately fund the work at Hanford. She is president of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The fuser makes progress
Work to start up the second of two 300-ton waste melters at the waste treatment plant, the largest in the world and the core of the vitrification process to heat waste to 2,100°F, reached a first critical temperature of 300°F in tests on March 13, DOE said. The agency called the test a “deliberative process” that is expected to last several weeks.
The first melter heating process that started in October 2022 had to be stopped, but finally reached its temperature milestone in July 2023. “Achieving operational temperature and simultaneous operation of both melters will represent an important step toward the future immobilization of Hanford tank waste,” DOE. said
Brian Hartman, senior vice president and project manager for Bechtel’s waste treatment plant, said heating up the second melter is a significant achievement while using the melter at the same time. At full temperature, the teams will add glass beads to create a molten pool in which to mix glass.
The DOE also said Bechtel won 92 percent of its potential fee for the 2023 plant work related to engineering, nuclear safety, procurement, construction, commissioning, commissioning process and operating protocols for the treatment of more complex high-level waste. That work has largely stalled since 2012 due to technical issues, but DOE is required to begin dealing with high-level waste by 2033.
Bechtel’s share totaled $9.5 million, the agency said.
The contractor received four “excellent” and three “good” performance ratings for key criteria, the agency said, but also noted “areas for improvement” including the plant equipment procurement process and construction subcontracts..
The results of a separate audit issued this month by the DOE inspector general found some lapses in Bechtel’s goals for self-executing and subcontracting. The audit estimated up to $700 million in lost bidding opportunities for small businesses and other suppliers. He said Bechtel did not give the vendors enough time to respond to the requests and cited the DOE for insufficient follow-up.
The watchdog offered eight recommendations “which, if fully implemented, should help ensure [DOE] is not billed for unallowable fees and that there are more competitive outsourcing opportunities available to other providers,” the report says.
Key contract finally awarded
But the work will also be accelerated by DOE’s recent award of a hotly contested and overdue site cleanup management contract, now worth $45 billion over ten years, to a team led by BWX Technologies.
The contract was halted shortly after the 2023 award due to litigation from a losing bidder that claimed the selected BWXT team, which includes contractors Fluor and Amentum, was ineligible. But the DOE corrected the eligibility omission without relaunching the procurement or awarding the contract to the protesting competitor, a joint venture of AtkinsRéalis Nuclear Secured, Jacobs and Westinghouse.
The contract, which was initially to manage Hanford’s waste now in buried tanks, was expanded to also include the eventual operation of the vitrification plant. The lawsuit over the original award was formally terminated.
