Area job growth and continued positive regional housing market for years to come. DOE OKs new price tag for vitrification plant.

Tri City Washington ~ The Department of Energy has approved the new estimate for Hanford's huge vitrification plant after adding $57 million to the price tag.

That brings the official cost estimate to $12.26 billion, more than double the official estimate in 2003.

The new figure will stand only if Congress approves at least $690 million for the plant each year until it's ready for full operation in late 2019.

The latest estimate is based on an in-depth cost review by the Army Corps of Engineers completed last year that put the plant's cost at $12.203 billion without contractor Bechtel National's fee payment.

That was up from an estimate of $5.5 billion in 2003, also without fee.

The additional $57 million covers in part the contractor's fee and more money for technical project review and oversight. It would be more, but the contingency costs budgeted have been reduced somewhat as progress has been made to reduce some of the uncertainties on the project.

The new estimate is "an important step in the process that follows review of technical merit, the project work plan and the validation of our estimates by the Army Corps of Engineers," said Megan Barnett, a DOE headquarters spokeswoman. "And it gives us an estimate from which we can effectively plan."

In September, when the Corps report was released, DOE said that the estimate then likely would be close to the number it adopted for the project's budget baseline...[more].

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