N-waste plant work OK’d

YAKIMA – Work to build a massive waste treatment plant at south-central Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation will ramp up again within 30 days, the U.S. Department of Energy said Tuesday.

The news comes nearly two years after federal officials slowed, then halted, construction on parts of the $12.2 billion plant amid escalating costs, seismic concerns and technical problems.

The return to full construction follows extensive analysis of new data collected from deep holes drilled at the site last year to analyze the plant’s ability to withstand a severe earthquake.

“This certification marks the end of a two-year project to plan, collect and analyze new geological data necessary to complete the design and construction of one of the largest and most complex nuclear facilities in the DOE,” said Jim Rispoli, assistant secretary of energy for environmental management.

The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup costs expected to top $50 billion.

The cornerstone of cleanup is the so-called vitrification plant, which is being designed to convert millions of gallons of radioactive waste to glasslike logs for permanent disposal underground.

In 2002, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised concerns that the department’s seismic review of the plant site was inadequate.

A subsequent review in 2004 found that the force of the ground movements at the site during a worst-case-scenario earthquake would be 38 percent greater than previously estimated.

The department ordered contractor Bechtel National to increase the seismic design criteria by 38 percent. The latest review, certified to Congress on Tuesday, upheld those criteria.