As workers struggle to remove remnants of Hanford’s old industrial mission, construction of a $12.3-billion state-of-the-art waste-treatment plant symbolizes its future. If construction officials master cost, schedule and technology challenges, the vitrification plant will restore production to the site and offer the region an economic boost.
The multibuilding, 65-acre vitrification complex will receive nuclear and chemical waste from aging underground tanks, remove water and solids and mix the remainder with molten glass to produce hard logs. Low-level radioactive logs will be disposed of onsite; high-level logs will eventually go to the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada.