The big jump has Mike Lawrence nibbling his fingernails.

In February, the Department of Energy expects to ask Congress to set aside $600 million in fiscal 2001, rather than the roughly $100 million of past years, to help pay the eventual bill the federal government may owe BNFL Inc. to glassify Hanford's radioactive tanks wastes.

The nail-biting question for Lawrence, manager of BNFL's Hanford project, is whether Congress will accept a half-billion-dollar increase and set aside $600 million in 2001.

If Congress fails to come close to the sum, that financial crunch could delay signing a glassification contract long enough to push the matter into a new presidential administration in 2001, he said.

A new DOE secretary and administration likely would want to mull over the complex privatization concept to pay for glassification before committing to it. That extra pondering would mean more delays in tackling Hanford's biggest cleanup project, Lawrence told the Tri-City Herald's editorial board Thursday.

DOE and BNFL are negotiating a long-term contract for BNFL to build and operate plants to turn 10 percent of Hanford radioactive tank wastes into glass by 2018. Future contracts will tackle the other 90 percent.

The pending key date is August, which is when BNFL and DOE hope to sign the contract. BNFL and DOE think glassification could begin in 2005, but they want to keep to the original 2007 deadline in the legally enforceable contract because they want the cushion if anything goes wrong.

The project is expected to cost $6.9 billion in 1997 dollars. Because the cost is so high, BNFL's and DOE's contract will call for BNFL to get paid only when it produces glass. So far, DOE has convinced Congress to set aside slightly more than $100 million yearly to save up for the predicted eventual $1 billion annual bills when glassification starts.

To save up enough money by 2007, DOE calculates the $100 million in annual set-aside money needs to increase to about $600 million beginning in 2001. And that increase request will be formally unveiled in about three months.

"We're really at a critical stage,"Lawrence said.

BNFL needs to stay within the $6.9 billion target to be able to convince DOE to sign the contract and Congress to allocate the money. Actually, the project's basic cost is not supposed to exceed $3.5 billion because the rest of the money will go for finance charges and repaying huge upfront investment loans with interest.

BNFL's design work pushed the basic cost estimate above $3.5 billion because many requirements, processes and materials proved to be more expensive than anticipated, Lawrence said.

But subsequent changes pushed the estimated basic costs back below the $3.5 billion limit, he said.

Instead of putting the preliminary treatment facilities, one high-level radioactive waste melter and three low-level waste melters into one huge building, they are split into separate buildings, which should eliminate some construction bottlenecks, Lawrence said.

Also, BNFL plans not to put the low-level waste melters inside hot cells as originally planned. Instead, the shielding on the melters will be increased, which should trim costs while not affecting safety, Lawrence said. The high-level waste melter will be installed in a shielded hot cell.

If the project stays on schedule, BNFL's 600 or so design people will grow to about 700 in 2000. Construction workers would start being hired in significant numbers in 2001 to ramp up to about 3,600 people in 2003, with about 2,900 in construction jobs. Then the work force would gradually shrink to about 900 in 2007 and to about 500 by 2008 or 2009.