Hanford contractor fined again over safety

YAKIMA – The U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday it plans to issue a $165,000 fine against the contractor building a massive plant to treat radioactive waste at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site.

It’s the second fine for Bechtel National Inc. for violating the government’s nuclear safety requirements at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south-central Washington.

In March 2006, the Energy Department fined Bechtel $198,000 for violations that centered on design and construction problems between May 2002 and September 2005.

In addition, the company also had $300,000 of its fee withheld over worker safety concerns in February 2005.

In 2000, Bechtel took over a struggling project to design and build a plant to convert millions of gallons of radioactive waste into glasslike logs for long-term disposal. The project has long been considered the cornerstone of cleanup at Hanford, which was created in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.

Since 2000, the cost of the project has ballooned from $4.3 billion to $12.2 billion. The startup date also has been pushed from 2011 to 2019.

Thursday’s notice of intent to fine was for a series of violations that occurred between October 2001 and February 2006. They included failures in processes to control design changes and failure to ensure vendor-supplied equipment met nuclear safety specifications, the Energy Department said in a statement.