The ultimate test of Fluor Daniel's performance is how well it cleans up Hanford's environmental mess." The proof is in how they produce," said Mike Wilson, the Washington Department of Ecology's nuclear programs manager.

On the plus side, Fluor's second-year cleanup record looks better than the first year, when progress was shaky.

Cleanup didn't stall completely during the company's first 12 months - the deactivation of the Plutonium-Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) was finished 15 months ahead of schedule and $75 million under budget, and Lockheed Martin Hanford Corp. got good marks for taking over operation of the tank farms.

But a chemical tank exploded at the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP), and a program to move scrap plutonium within the plant was stopped for a needed safety-related overhaul.

And the timetables and cost estimates for moving spent nuclear fuel from the leaky K Basins grew bigger and more uncertain.

In its sophomore year, the Fluor-led corporate team appears to have a better grasp on cleanup problems. Some long-running problems at the K Basins and PFP seem to be solidly on their way to being fixed.

But several struggles continue.

One indication of progress is that Hanford is being dinged less on fines.

In Fluor's first year, $340,625 in fines were levied against programs supervised by the company - with most pertaining to various PFP troubles.

In Fluor's second year, the site has been hit with only one fine -$75,600 for having inadequate leak-detection systems in a cluster of three underground radioactive waste tanks. Hanford is contesting that state fine.

Here are highlights of cleanup progress in Fluor's second year:

KBasins

The Department of Energy, Fluor and subcontractor DE&S Hanford have struggled to get a handle on moving 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel from two leak-prone basins near the Columbia River to a huge underground vault in central Hanford.

This project had been plagued by numerous technical, management, cost estimating and timetable problems. That resulted in DE&S Hanford - or "Duke" - getting only a one-year extension on its contract.

But DOE Hanford Manager John Wagoner, Fluor President Ron Hanson and other observers believe progress on this project has turned around, with the worst days behind it. "I feel very good about what is happening there," Hanson said.

In the past several months, Duke brought in new people. Also, Fluor and Duke merged their K Basins project departments - an arrangement that all say has improved their working relationships.

A timetable was recently set with fuel removal to begin in late 2000 and to end in late 2003 - with the sludge removal and other cleanup work to be done on the basins by 2007.

Commitments were made to keep the project's overall price tag below $1.6 billion.

"What we do in 1999 is important. It will set the tone for the project in the long run," Hanson said.

Plutonium Finishing Plant

A moratorium in place since January 1997 has halted efforts to move scrap plutonium from PFP to the site's furnaces for conversion into a safer powder form.

That's because a massive overhaul in training and safety procedures is under way to correct long-running PFP problems that surfaced after B&W Hanford took over in late 1996. B&W Hanford and Fluor called for the moratorium to fix the entire picture.

The overhaul's massive extent -coupled with delays caused by a May 1997 chemical tank explosion - has kept the moratorium in place.

Fluor and B&W Hanford hope to evaluate the overhaul this month. And DOE hopes to do its own evaluation in December. If all goes well, work within the PFP is expected to crank back up to full speed.

Tank farms

Efforts to pump wastes from the single-shell tanks into the safer double-shell tanks have fallen so far behind schedule that for awhile the state of Washington was on the brink of filing a lawsuit against DOE.

Despite the delays, the tank farm subcontractor, Lockheed Martin Hanford Corp., has gotten high marks from DOE, Fluor and various observers, including the state Ecology Department. The consensus is that Lockheed inherited a big problem from its first day, and has done well in trying to tackle it.

"Lockheed has had a deep hole to dig itself out of," Wilson said.

Pam Brown, the city of Richland's Hanford analyst said: "I think (Lockheed) has demonstrated a better understanding of the tank farm issues than the previous companies."

Meanwhile, several observers voiced warnings about the future of Hanford's tank wastes.

A permanent solution depends on Fluor and Lockheed delivering the right wastes in the right conditions to the right places at the right times to a plant where it will be turned into glass logs.

The complicated coordination between Lockheed and BNFL, the contractor that will build and operate a glassification plant, will be a major challenge for Fluor, observers said.

Hanson is confident the coordination between Lockheed and BNFL will go well. The two sides already have been coordinating plans. The recent signing of BNFL's and DOE's glassification design contract should improve that relationship, Hanson said.

In a related issue, George Kyriazis, vice chairman of the Hanford Advisory Board, believes Fluor fell short in dealing with the radioactive wastes seeping from underground tanks to the ground water.

Hanford has had several uncoordinated programs to analyze and fix the problems of oozing subterranean contamination.

At the beginning of 1998, DOE appointed Bechtel Hanford Inc. to come up with a plan to coordinate the hodgepodge of programs and come up with a master plan to study and fix the problems.

Kyriazis said Fluor - because it is Hanford's site manager with responsibility for the overall picture and the tank farms - should have recognized the problem and aggressively stepped in to fix it before DOE picked Bechtel to do the job.

BPlant

This is one of central Hanford's huge former chemical processing plants. And when workers recently finished deactivating the plant, it marked the second straight year Fluor and subcontractor B&W Hanford closed one of the plants on or ahead of schedule. PUREX was the first.

"Deactivation" means the plant is cleaned out enough that only a minimum amount of monitoring is still needed, cutting maintenance costs dramatically.

Quality control

Hanson and Wagoner believe improvements in quality controls are needed - and pledge to make it a major Fluor push as its third year unfolds.

That means identifying problems with quality and fixing them in a timely manner.

Hanford's most obvious example of a quality control problem occurred in early 1997, during Fluor's first year at the site. That's when chemicals were left forgotten in a PFP tank, gradually converting into a condition where they exploded. Systems and warnings that should have prevented the accident failed.

"We're going to embark on a big quality effort," Hanson said.

Wagoner added, "Fixing (quality control problems) can give you quick improvements across the entire site."