11/11/2005

Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Energy will be required to make progress reports to Congress four times a year on its efforts to build a waste-treatment plant at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation, according to a new report.

The so-called vitrification plant is being built to convert millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste — the remnants of decades of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal — into glasslike logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste repository.

However, a report last year found that the Energy Department had underestimated the impact a large earthquake could have on the plant. That report and other construction problems have resulted in significant delays and skyrocketing construction costs, and the agency halted construction on large portions of the plant earlier this year.

The department has repeatedly refused to release a new cost estimate for the plant, already tagged at more than $5.8 billion. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman notified a House committee by letter Tuesday that the estimated cost to build and test the plant is expected to increase more than 25 percent. The work also will take longer to complete, Bodman said.

The letter fulfilled a requirement in the 2003 defense authorization act that the Energy Department notify Congress if a major project's cost estimate increases more than 25 percent.

It was the most information the department has so far released on the plant's rising cost.

The plant was expected to cost $4.3 billion when the contract was initially awarded in 2000. The cost had grown more than 30 percent before the latest problems were uncovered.

Congress now is requiring the department to give a full report by Dec. 1 "on actions taken to rectify the management failures" at the vitrification plant. Quarterly reports will be due to the House and Senate appropriations committees beginning Jan. 1, 2006.

A House-Senate committee approved the new reporting requirements as part of the 2006 Hanford budget, which has yet to go to the full House and Senate for a vote. The budget cuts funding for the waste treatment plant from $690 million to $526 million for fiscal 2006.

The committee report blamed the latest cost increase on contractor estimating problems, technical problems and "insufficient project contingency."

"It is unclear what steps DOE will take to better ensure effective management and oversight of the project in the longer term," the report said.

"The high-level waste vitrification program at Hanford has had a long history of failure — more than $9 billion has been spent over the last 15 years," the committee report said in criticism leveled at the Energy Department.

About 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste is stewing in 177 underground tanks at the Hanford site, which was created as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Some of the tanks are suspected of having leaked into the aquifer, threatening the Columbia River less than 10 miles away and making removal of the waste a top priority.