Bechtel has received a potential $3.1 billion contract modification from the Energy Department to complete the initial phase of a nuclear waste treatment facility at Hanford site in Washington.
Bechtel will get incentives for completion of commissioning work on the low activity waste facility by January 2022 and achievement of other technical milestones under the contract modification, the company said Friday.
DOE also changed the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant project™s baseline that represents a cost increase of approximately $4.5 billion and brings the total project cost to $16.8 billion, the department said Friday.
The modification will extend the company™s current contract for another three years and will cover construction of at least 20 support facilities and an analytical laboratory, which Bechtel says are already complete.
The company expects the LAW facility construction to conclude in June 2018.
Bechtel noted that DOE will use the LAW facility to process and treat approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste stored in underground tanks and will transfer the treated waste into stainless steel containers for disposal at Hanford™s low-level waste disposal site.
The department will process higher-activity waste at two additional treatment facilities that are scheduled to be finished by mid-2030s.
DOE tapped Bechtel and subcontractor URS, now known as AECOM (NYSE: ACM), in 2000 to complete work on the WTP project.
