Richland business wins nearly $5 million contract for Hanford work

A Richland construction company has been awarded a Hanford subcontract worth $4.7 million.

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. picked DGR Grant Construction to build infrastructure needed for the disposal of glassified waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation.

Hanford’s vitrification plant is required to begin operating by the end of 2023 and Hanford must be ready to dispose of the waste then.

The $17 billion plant is being built to turn much of the 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste held in underground tanks at Hanford into a glass form form disposal.

The waste is left from the production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program during World War II and the Cold War.

Initially, the vitrification plant will treat some of the least radioactive tank waste — low activity waste.

The glass logs of that waste will be buried at the Integrated Disposal Facility, a lined landfill in the center of the Hanford site for only the least radioactive tank waste.

Vitrified high level tank waste must be sent to a national geological repository once the nation has one, such as Yucca Mountain, Nev.

Hanford landfill built in 2006

DGR Grant will upgrade the limited infrastructure at the Integrated Disposal Facility and build more to provide the utilities, such as electricity and lighting, that will be needed when it opens.

CH2M, owned by Jacobs Engineering, already has started construction of access roads and grading. DGR Grant will pave the roads.

DGR Grant is expected to begin work at the landfill in January.

Construction of the Integrated Disposal Facility’s first two waste disposal cells was completed in 2006, before delays in completion of the vitrification plant.

The landfill eventually could be expanded to six cells and to cover 26 acres.

The landfill now is 42 feet deep, 1,500 feet long and 765 feet wide.

Around its top is a “shine berm,” a 7-foot-tall wall of dirt to shield workers from radiation. Cranes are planned to be used to place waste in the landfill.

At its bottom is a 7-foot-thick liner system to prevent water, including rain or snow melt, from carrying contaminants to the soil beneath the landfill and polluting groundwater. It is backed up with a leak detection system.

When the landfill closes, it will be topped with an engineered soil cap to keep water out.

This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 11:13 AM.