Cost of Hanford waste plant could quadruple

A $6 billion effort to build and operate a massive plant at Hanford is at risk of delays and cost overruns that could more than quadruple the project's price tag, according to federal investigators.

U.S. Energy Department officials have accelerated the planning and preparations for a facility that will trap in glass a complex mixture of deadly waste stored in buried tanks. That's led to increased costs in the short term and possibly set the stage for more serious problems down the road, the investigators say in a report released last week by the General Accounting Office.

The department "has adopted a high-risk strategy," the GAO report concludes.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the site of the nation's largest nuclear waste cleanup, and treating 53 million gallons of radioactive and dangerous tank waste is going to be tricky no matter how it's tackled, countered Jessie Roberson, the head of the Energy Department's cleanup program.

"This is a huge construction project," she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "It's not going to be risk-free under any profile."

Roberson, who has resigned from her position, citing family reasons, will leave the department later this month. She said she is proud of the progress that has been made at Hanford and believes the project will be successful. The plant is 30 percent constructed.

But construction is so out of sync with the planning process that workers ready to build interior walls for the plant are being given other projects to do while the planners catch up, the report found.

And a plan initiated by Roberson almost three years ago that called for accelerated cleanup -- meaning more waste would be treated faster -- required significant alterations to plans for the plant. To stay on schedule for turning the waste into glass beginning in 2011, the Energy Department had to make cuts elsewhere.

The accelerated cleanup is supposed to reduce the cost of treating the tank waste from $56 billion to $36 billion by getting the job done faster -- the project would be completed by 2028, a reduction of almost 20 years. The investigation, however, concluded that these savings were overestimated and amounted to around $12 billion.

And by speeding up the project, the Energy Department hasn't fully investigated alternative approaches to separating the tank waste, a key step to the treatment process that precedes turning the waste to glass or "vitrifying" it. That omission could cost the project about $50 million annually and locks it into a sole provider of a product key to the process.

A battle is still being waged in the federal courts to reclassify some portions of the tank waste so that it can be dealt with in ways less protective of the environment. The Energy Department tried earlier this year to get congress to change the definition but that effort has failed.

However, the department is proceeding with plans that assume the waste will be reclassified. If this occurs, the Hanford site could see a $350 million savings, the investigators concluded. If reclassification doesn't happen, there could be $19 billion in extra costs, an estimate deemed low by both Roberson and the investigators.

Roberson vowed the Energy Department is committed to turning 99 percent of the waste into glass -- whether in the plant that's being built or through a process under development called "bulk vitrification" where train-car sized containers of waste are turned to glass.

The $2 billion-a-year cleanup of the Eastern Washington site is addressing waste generated during plutonium production for nuclear bombs.

"Challenge and controversy are a natural part of this program," Roberson said. "This is a program that is designed to address problems. We're not in the business of growing daisies."

P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at 206-448-8042 or lisastiffler@seattlepi.com

Add P-I Local headlines to