nuclear-news

Hiring is underway for some of the workers who likely will operate Hanford’s $17 billion vitrification plant.

Some are already at work in one of the Hanford nuclear reservation plant’s key control rooms, helping monitor the Low Activity Waste Facility and its systems around the clock.

The hiring and training of workers to operate the plant is “a significant development on the path to finally beginning to treat Hanford’s toxic and radioactive tank waste,” said the Washington state Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator…..

The Department of Energy is making plans for a new contract covering vitrification plant operations and maintenance for when the plant starts full operations for treating low activity radioactive waste as soon as 2022. ……

The plant is being built to turn much of the 56 million gallons of waste held in underground tanks into a stable glass form for 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.