DOE wants Bechtel out of radioactive waste cleanup

The US Department of Energy wants Bechtel removed from a radioactive waste "cleanup" project at the Hanford nuclear weapons site after technical errors were uncovered along with ballooning costs. A DOE memo cites 34 technical problems attributed to Bechtel National, which designed and built the plant to stabilize and contain 56 million gallons of radioactive waste from a half-century of nuclear weapons production at the Hanford Site in central Washington. The memo says the Bechtel engineering performance "places unnecessarily high risk that the (plant) design will not be effectively completed." The project is already three times more expensive than its original estimate, having ballooned to $12.3 billion and the price is expected to soar even higher. Writes Peter Eisler in USA Today: "The sprawling, 586-square-mile Hanford Site was home to multiple nuclear reactors that produced plutonium for U.S. nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. Cleaning up the waste — a mix of highly radioactive liquid and sludge stored in 177 underground tanks — is considered the nation's most complex and costly environmental restoration project." Many of these tanks have leaked, contaminating the Columbia and Snake Rivers.