Report: Hanford Plant’s Costs Soar

By AP

SEATTLE (AP) Construction of a new plant to treat radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation could cost as much as 67 percent more than first estimated and take an additional four years, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The report confirms earlier accounts of the skyrocketing cost to build the plant and once again raises concerns about its future.

The vitrification plant is being designed to convert radioactive waste into glasslike logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste repository. The project has encountered numerous problems and delays in the past decade, and the U.S. Department of Energy slowed construction on large portions of the plant several months ago amid rising costs and seismic concerns.

The Energy Department, which manages cleanup at the south- central Washington site, requested a review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last year after a report showed the DOE had underestimated the impact a severe earthquake would have on the plant.

The corps’ report, completed in May, estimated costs could soar nearly $4 billion, from $5.8 billion to $9.65 billion, making it among the most costly construction projects in the country, The Seattle Times reported.

The plant also might not be completed until 2015, four years after the 2011 deadline mandated under the Tri-Party Agreement, the cleanup pact signed by state and federal officials, according to the corps’ report.

The Energy Department has repeatedly refused to release the corps’ report or a new cost estimate or schedule for completing the project. The Times said a copy of the report was leaked to the newspaper.

The report confirms an estimate Congress announced earlier this year, which found the cost could rise as high as $10 billion. The Energy Department notified state officials and members of Congress two months ago that the cost would rise by more than 25 percent and that the department likely would not meet the deadline.

State officials are considering whether they will need to go to court to enforce cleanup deadlines.

“We’re not interested in suing the federal government, we’re not interested in having a federal judge control the cleanup budget, but we don’t have a lot of other options,” said Jay Manning, director of the state Department of Ecology.

The Energy Department and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman already are taking steps to address problems with the project, including some of those detailed in the report, department spokesman Mike Waldron said Wednesday.

“When the issues related to the waste treatment plant came to the secretary’s attention, he immediately began to personally review the project,” Waldron said. “And he has been engaged in formulating a path forward.”

The corps also cannot confirm the estimates of cost and schedule overruns, so the department did not want to release unproven information, Waldron said. “Our intention is not to add to any speculation but rather to make commitments that we can keep based on verifiable facts,” Waldron said.

But the chairman of a congressional committee that controls the Department of Energy’s budget said the report raises legitimate concerns.

“It ought to raise a lot more red flags than just from us,” U.S. Rep. Dave Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water, told The Times.

“It ought to send real messages that either somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, or somebody’s not watching the door. We’ve got to clean it up, but somebody has got to watch out for the taxpayer.”