The Office of River Protection (DOE-ORP) Past Present and Future
The US. Department of Energy, Office of River Protection (ORP) manages the River Protection Project (RPP) at the Hanford Site in Washington State. ORP is responsible fur safe storage, retrieval, treatment, and disposal of the 200,000 cubic meters (53 million gallons) of highly toxic, high-level radioactive waste stored in 177 large underground tanks located within 7 miles of the Columbia River. Most of these tanks are decades beyond their design life and more than one-third have leaked, resulting in an estimated 3800 cubic meters of waste into the soil. For the past decade the major effort was to improve tank waste storage conditions to assure that the waste is stored safely, and to initiate actions to acquire waste treatment and immobilization capability so that a permanent solution can be achieved. Most of this work is finished and the focus has shifted to acquiring a Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) and preparing to retrieve waste from the tanks and deliver it to the WTP. ORP was proceeding to acquire privatized waste treatment services from BNFL Inc. for Phase 1 of the project that would treat and immobilize 10% of the waste mass and 25% of the radioactivity by 2018. However, in April 2000 that contractor submitted an unacceptably high price and that contract was terminated. ORP proceeded to acquire the WTP under a cost-plus-incentive fee completion contract. An expedited procurement was conducted and the WTP contract was awarded to Bechtel National Inc. on December 11, 2000. The focus for the future is to finish the WTP design and get it constructed and started up by 2007. Tank waste retrieval and waste feed delivery systems need to he put into place and immobilized waste storage and disposal facilities constructed to receive the waste products from the WTP. Ways to improve and optimize the waste treatment complex will be pursued. ORP is also implementing project management controls so that the RPP is managed as a single, integrated project.
- Research Organization:
- DOE-ORP (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC06-96RL13200
- OSTI ID:
- 806005
- Report Number(s):
- ORP-7662-FP, Rev.0; TRN: US0301080
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Conference title not supplied, Conference location not supplied, Conference dates not supplied; Other Information: PBD: 1 Feb 2001
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
2020 Vision for Tank Waste Cleanup (One System Integration) - 12506
Hanford Waste Treatment Complex Foundation for Success