RICHLAND, WA - The federal government is building a massive radioactive waste treatment plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. To make sure that factory works the government built a quarter-scale model in Richland. Today federal scientists and engineers said testing is nearly complete and their 90-million-dollar experiment worked. Richland Correspondent Anna King reports.

Federal officials say since the model worked, the massive waste treatment plant, or WTP, should work too. That’s big news. It means the Department of Energy can get permits and start work on many parts of the large-scale plant at Hanford. The facility is supposed to turn 53 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste into more stable glass logs. Robert Gilbert is a federal engineer working on the scale-model plant.

Gilbert: “It is a relief. So by doing this work now we have learned a lot of things that will help us get through the commissioning of the WTP faster.”

Gilbert says there are still several technical problems that remain unresolved, but teams of engineers and scientists are working on them. The huge waste treatment plant is scheduled to start up in about 10 years.

Copyright 2009 Northwest Public Radio

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