Washington River Protection Solutions: WRPS makes significant strides at Hanford’s tank farms

What makes me most proud as president and project manager of Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) is the opportunity to be part of a team that demonstrates a steadfast commitment to safety while tackling one of the most challenging projects in the environmental cleanup industry.

As the tank operations contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (DOE-ORP), WRPS manages 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks. This involves removing waste from Hanford’s single-shell tanks and transferring it to more robust double-shell tanks and building a waste-delivery system to support the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.

Since the beginning of our contract in 2008, WRPS, an AECOM-led company that partners with Atkins and AREVA, has built a reputation as one of the safest cleanup contractors in the DOE complex. In fact, we finished third in the DOE Office of Environmental Management’s prime contractor safety rankings for 2017. We’ve accomplished this with a simple philosophy: Plan each job thoroughly, address all possible hazards, and use the best tools to get the job done safely and efficiently.

In the past year, WRPS received safety innovation awards from both the Campbell Institute at the National Safety Council and the Voluntary Protection Program Participants Association for developing a program that further protects our workers from heat stress. During our hot summer months workers are equipped with real-time monitoring that measures the level of heat strain in response to heat-stress conditions. This information allows a worker to exit the tank farm before the threat of a heat-related ailment.

We continue to make improvements to our industrial hygiene program. We recently began using full-face air-purifying respirators (FFAPRs) in one of the tank farms for specific work scope. FFAPR cartridges eliminate some of the industrial hazards that come with self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) gear, which is heavy, cumbersome and restricts movement. The cartridges have been tested and the results show they can last several hours before they need to be changed, whereas SCBA bottles must be changed out every 30-60 minutes.

This decision to deploy FFAPRs was made with our partners – the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council – and supported by months of data gathered during extensive respirator cartridge testing. We also made great strides in advancing vapor detection and monitoring technologies in several tank farms.

In February 2017, ORP and WRPS completed a legal agreement with the state to remove waste from tank AY-102, one of Hanford’s oldest double-shell tanks. The job required nearly two years of work to remove old, highly contaminated equipment; and design, fabricate and install new equipment to safely retrieve the waste.

Last October, the Project Management Institute (PMI) named the AY-102 Recovery Project its Global Project of the Year. The award recognizes large, complex projects that cost more than $100 million and demonstrate superior performance of project management practices, superior organizational results and positive impacts on society.

PMI also recognized WRPS’ AP Farm Exhauster Upgrade Project with an award for Project Excellence – one of only three global awards for projects with a budget of less than $100 million.

WRPS completed several other high-profile retrieval projects over the past 12 months, including the completion of waste retrieval from single-shell tank C-105. With the completion of C-105, waste in all 16 tanks within C Farm has been retrieved, making it the first Hanford tank farm to be retrieved.

After documenting completion of retrieval operations at C Farm with the state and the Environmental Protection Agency, ORP and WRPS will develop a process, with concurrence from the state, for final closure of C Farm.

This year, we look forward to addressing more cleanup challenges, which I’m confident will continue to bring out the best in our talented team. This work will include:

▪  Supporting ORP’s sequenced approach for treating low-activity waste as soon as 2022.

▪  Building the infrastructure for the next tank farms to be retrieved.

▪  Completing two 242-A Evaporator campaigns to create storage space in the double-shell tank system.

▪  Continuing to aggressively target new technologies that support our tank integrity program.

Our sustained record of accomplishment is possible because of the resources we receive from our parent companies and the community, the skills and commitment of our workforce, our partnership with the unions, and the support of DOE and our regulators. Together, we take pride in the safe, effective and cost-efficient progress in the tank farms.

This story was originally published April 1, 2018 at 5:08 PM with the headline "Washington River Protection Solutions: WRPS makes significant strides at Hanford’s tank farms."