Privatizing Hanford Has Industry Support

More than 100 industry representatives attended a meeting this week on privatization at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, reassuring the Energy Department that private companies are interested in doing business there.

The federal agency is accepting bids from companies interested in building and operating a facility to mix radioactive liquid wastes with molten glass and form it into glass logs - a process called vitrification. The wastes now are stored in 177 underground tanks, some of which are leaking.

“This is a flagship initiative for the department,” said Jackson Kinzer, who heads the project for the department at Hanford. “This is the biggest privatization project DOE has attempted.”

Under the plan, private companies would pay all the design, construction and operating costs. The Energy Department would pay for every waste log produced.

It would cost the government about $40 million to build and operate the treatment plants, DOE says.

The government hopes private industry can reduce the tab by 30 percent.

The underground tank farm at Hanford poses one of the most dangerous and complicated problems facing the Energy Department as it cleans up radioactive waste left over from decades of nuclear weapons production.

The 177 buried tanks contain 240,000 metric tons of radioactive wastes from plutonium processing. The contents of some of the tanks are not known and several of them have been subject to heat buildup, requiring complicated venting of flammable gases.

Industry representatives were briefed Thursday about what could be a 32-year-long venture by competing private companies, with the more efficient operation earning more money.

The turnout showed there is interest in bidding on the project, Kinzer said.

But the companies also sought reassurances the government will be able to finance the undertaking, he said.

The Energy Department plans to award multiple contracts this summer to build demonstration-scale treatment plants. In 1998, the agency will pick the best two proposals to build prototype low-level-waste treatment plants.