A small waste glassification project in southwestern New York appears on track to finish its two-year glassification run close to on time.

The Department of Energy and Westinghouse West Valley Co. plan to convert 600,000 gallons of high-level liquid radioactive wastes into glass by June 1998, enough to fill as many as 330 canisters.

The plant went on line in June 1996. Workers filled 161 canisters by the end of last month.

Richard Humphrey, Westinghouse's construction and project manager, is confident the plant can meet the June deadline for finishing the work.

After that, West Valley officials still will have to figure out whether they want to glassify the crusts and salt cake left in the bottom of the site's sole 1-million-gallon tank.

The wastes are from a failed plan to reprocess commercial nuclear fuel, extracting uranium to make new fuel rods. The short-lived effort left an environmental mess on a 5-square-mile site owned by New York state.

DOE hired Westinghouse in 1982 to design the glassification plant. A test plant was built, and design work continued through the 1980s as DOE fine-tuned the specifications for the glass to meet.

Construction began in 1991 with a projected $161 million price tag. It was finished in 1995 for $166 million. Then came a year of tests.

Humphrey said the plant experienced some routine mechanical glitches.

But the melter - designed by Westinghouse and Battelle-Northwest with some help from GTS Duratek - has performed well, he said.

No melter breakdowns have occurred, and none appear likely through mid-1998, he said.