Bechtel continued in its role as a major service provider to the U.S. government in 2007, with projects including a massive facility to treat hazardous waste left over from the Cold War.
The Waste Treatment Plant, under construction at the former nuclear production site in Hanford, Washington, will use a process called vitrification to transform some 200 million liters of radioactive and chemical waste into glass so it can be safely stored. The plant will be the largest of its type.
In 2007, a Bechtel-University of California consortium began operating and managing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. A second Bechtel-UC group manages Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The labs are the nation’s premier research institutions for defense and science.
A Bechtel joint venture also is managing decommissioning and environmental remediation at the former nuclear production facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was a birthplace of the atomic age. In Nevada, we are helping to obtain an operating license for Yucca Mountain, the planned national repository for nuclear waste.
Our Defense and Space division kept busy last year with several major projects. In Alaska, we are adding additional silos for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, which is designed to protect the United States from long-range missile attack. On the South Pacific atoll of Kwajalein, a Bechtel joint venture provides management resources in support of missile defense activities.
We also continued our work to eliminate chemical weapons at U.S. defense sites in Colorado and Kentucky.
