Fluor Daniel could hire up to 530 people in 2000, mostly to handle increased work at the K Basins and Plutonium Finishing Plant.

While Fluor has 530 open job slots on the drawing board, some could be filled by workers transferring from other Hanford projects, Fluor officials cautioned.

However, Fluor expects to hire a significant portion of the Hanford Atomic and Metal Trades Council's skilled union workers, especially health physics technicians and nuclear-chemical operators, said Jim Hanna, Fluor director of industrial relations, and Jon Peterson, Fluor senior director of human resources.

Health physics technicians monitor people, equipment, buildings and grounds for radioactive contamination. Nuclear-chemical operators handle and move nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials.

Overall, the 530 open slots are a mix of union and engineering jobs. Fluor and its team of subcontractors employed 4,216 people at the end of November.

"We're working pretty hard to fill the openings,"Peterson said.

Of the 530 jobs, Fluor has made offers to 170 applicants but has not received answers yet. And Fluor is interviewing or setting up interviews with another 230 applicants.

The majority of the jobs are at PFP and K Basins, where workloads are increasing in 2000.

The PFP, which employed 482 people in September, plans to increase the daily volume of scrap plutonium it is converting into safer forms.

There are about a half-dozen methods to neutralize that plutonium, two of which are in use. Fluor expects to add one to two more methods in 2000. Also, one of the present methods - baking plutonium in "muffle furnaces"- will expand from two to five furnaces in 2000. And eventually, the number of shifts might increase at PFP.

Meanwhile, the K Basins is adding people to train as operators to begin moving 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel from the two indoor pools in November 2000 to a safer underground vault in central Hanford. This project employed 441 people in September.

Job openings are listed on Fluor's and the Department of Energy's employment Web sites at www.doejobbs.com and www.hanford.gov/opportunities.html on the Internet.