Colossal Cleanup

By John Altdorfer

World War II and the Cold War created one big mess—politically and environmentally. Now, nearly two decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Bechtel is cleaning up one of the most hazardous legacies of the nuclear arms race. In the process, the company is preparing a new generation of experts for the revival of the nuclear power industry.

Nestled in the southeastern corner of Washington state, the U.S. government’s site at Hanford was created in 1943 to produce plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs that ended World War II. After the war, production continued as the United States built up its nuclear arsenal to counter the growing threat from the Soviet Union. As the Cold War wound down in the late 1980s, the last of nine nuclear reactors built over the years at Hanford was decommissioned.

A big problem remained, however. Some 53 million gallons (more than 200 million liters) of concentrated radioactive waste—some dating to the dawn of the nuclear age—were left in 177 underground storage tanks that are now long past their intended service life. Some of the tanks have leaked a significant amount of waste into the ground, highlighting the urgency of a long-term engineered solution to the legacy problem.

As part of what some have called “putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle,” Bechtel National, working for the U.S. Department of Energy, is designing, constructing, and commissioning a treatment plant to bind the radioactive waste constituents in a glass matrix (a process called vitrification) so that the waste can be safely stored for thousands of years while the radioactivity decays.

Even for Bechtel, the Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) is big. Scheduled for completion in 2019, the total price tag is $12.2 billion. That outpaces the gross national product of many countries—and for good reason. “The buildings that contain these first-of-a-kind processes and equipment are huge” says Project Director Bill Elkins. “For starters, the pretreatment plant, the largest of the four major facilities, covers an area the size of two football fields and rises nearly 12 stories high.”

The pretreatment building, with its complex chemical processing systems, will separate radioactive material into low-activity and high-level waste streams before they are moved to other buildings for additional processing.

The low-activity waste treatment facility will be 240 feet (73 meters) wide and 330 feet (100 meters) long. The less-radioactive waste is dealt with in this facility. The more-radioactive high-level waste will be treated in a building covering an area 275 feet (84 meters) by 440 feet (134 meters). The treated waste in both buildings will be vitrified (combined with molten glass) and poured into cylindrical stainless steel canisters. Low-activity waste will be placed into final storage on the Hanford site while the high-level waste is destined for the national nuclear waste repository, now proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The two plants annually will fill nearly 1,600 canisters.

In addition to WTP’s trio of gigantic structures that house the processing systems, there will be almost 20 other structures that supply everything else needed to support the plant operation.

These include a sophisticated lab to ensure that the glass output products meet all regulatory requirements. Others address the need for huge amounts of steam, water, fuel, electricity, chilled water, and the like.

“The project poses a unique and challenging work environment,” says Project Manager Larry Simmons. “There aren’t a lot of blueprints we ,can borrow from and the waste types that have to be dealt with are unique at Hanford. It’s a hugely complicated project, but one of significant importance to the entire Pacific Northwest.”

Even with Bechtel’s diverse pool of expertise, finding enough qualified people to do the job at WTP posed a challenge. Nuclear expertise is in relatively short supply because it hasn’t been needed on a large scale—the last new U.S. nuclear power plant was ordered in 1978. Since then, the industry—led by Bechtel—has focused on modernizing and repairing existing plants. 

Today, however, rising energy costs, environmental concerns, and skyrocketing electrical demands have revived interest in nuclear power. Experts predict that during the next couple of decades, more than 25 new nuclear plants could come online in the United States.

The Waste Treatment Plant is acting as an incubator for the re-emerging nuclear power industry. “With a project this size, you severely challenge the industry’s ability to address all of the various needs, especially since the specialized, nuclear skill level has eroded over the past 25 years,” says Elkins. “We had to combine our ‘old school’ experience with a new generation of people to advance nuclear plant design and construction to the next stage. That’s one of the most important and rewarding things happening here.”

As Elkins and staff rekindle the nuclear talent embers, they are ramping up the know-how of everyone involved on the project, including craft employees hired from local union halls. “It’s difficult to find 3,000 workers with relevant nuclear industry experience,” says Simmons. “We’re bringing people in from all over the company, including from the power, telecommunications, and mining and metals sectors. They all receive extensive training to meet exceedingly high quality standards before they actually start working.”

Bechtel also is making a concerted effort to recruit new talent coming out of nuclear engineering programs at U.S. colleges and universities.

Though Hanford is one of the largest nuclear waste sites, it’s not the only one. According to the European Nuclear Society, 439 nuclear power plants operate worldwide, including 104 in the United States. They all generate waste (although different from the defense waste at Hanford) that will need to be treated, contained, and safely stored—an even more daunting task when new plants come online.

“It’s time to sharpen our pencils again,” says Elkins. “The work here is helping to reconstitute the U.S. nuclear industry. The WTP workforce is uniquely situated with the experience to be part of the rebuilding. It’s exciting to be part of this rejuvenating process.”

While laying the foundation for a nuclear renaissance is a worthy accomplishment, Bechtel also is proud to be part of the solution that ends a long-neglected threat of the Cold War era—and ensures a safer future for residents of the Pacific Northwest.

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