Funds will initiate a number of projects and allow contractors to begin hiring
– Edited by Linton Levy –
According to a report in the Tri-City Herald, The Department of Energy Hanford offices has received $1.57 billion from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to start additional cleanup work. Having the money in hand will permit work planned with stimulus money to begin.
"This will allow us to initiate a number of projects and allow contractors to begin hiring in the coming days," said Geoff Tyree, DOE spokesman. They'll also be permitted to begin working with subcontractors on the new projects. The Energy Department expects to give contractors notices to proceed with the work this week, Tyree said.
DOE Hanford projects are expected to eventually receive a total of $1.96 billion in federal stimulus money, which is estimated to retain or create about 4,000 Hanford jobs as the money is spent through Sept. 30, 2011.
Contractors who will do the Hanford work have been gathering CVs, interviewing potential workers and making contingent job offers as they waited for the money to be released to Hanford and for DOE to issue notices to proceed.
At a job fair Friday and Saturday, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. and its subcontractors made contingent offers to nearly 45 people for professional positions. Many were for the types of employees who will be needed to start the work, such as safety engineers, safety specialists, schedulers, and industrial hygienists. Also, CH2M Hill has about 140 people identified to hire as decontamination and decommissioning workers and nuclear chemical operators. More offers will be made after CH2M Hill sifts through the approximately 3,500 rsums it has collected from people eager to work on the stimulus projects, said Dee Millikin, CH2M Hill spokeswoman.
CH2M Hill is expected to receive the largest share of the total cleanup money, $1.3 billion, from the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office. Washington Closure Hanford, also under the Richland Operations Office, will get about $250 million in addition to an increased annual budget.
The DOE Hanford Office of River Protection will get $326 million to be spent with its tank farm contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, mostly to improve buildings, equipment and other infrastructure that will be needed to feed radioactive waste to the vitrification plant when it is ready to treat some of Hanford's worst waste in 2019.
Some of the initial work to start at Hanford with the stimulus money will be adding temporary work space, which will include bringing in trailers to serve as mobile offices on site. Training of new workers also will be an early step toward starting work. CH2M Hill's first projects may be work to decontaminate and demolish buildings at the Plutonium Finishing Plant in central Hanford and to clean up waste sites and demolish buildings near the K East and West reactors.
Washington River Protection Solutions will start the engineering work to make upgrades to infrastructure in the tank farms, said Erik Olds, DOE spokesperson. Other projects the contractor could start soon include making improvements to the 222-S Laboratory and assessing the soundness of leak-prone, single-shell tanks storing millions of gallons of radioactive waste underground.
Some of the first tasks done by Washington Closure Hanford could include expanding the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility in central Hanford. The landfill for low-level radioactive waste is expected to get very busy as Hanford cleanup is sped up with stimulus money.