Fluor Hanford will miss today's legal deadline to remove all of the K West Basin's spent nuclear fuel by about one week.

By today, Fluor was supposed to move 1,053 tons of spent fuel from the K Basins to a huge underground vault in central Hanford for the Department of Energy. The company expects to have moved almost 911 tons by today, said Fluor spokesman Michael Turner.

Fluor expects to finish moving the entire 1,053 tons by Jan. 7, Turner said.

The K Basins are two indoor, water-filled, leak-prone pools that originally held 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel 400 yards from the Columbia River.

The Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing Hanford's cleanup, calls for all 2,300 tons to be moved to the central Hanford vault by mid-2004. This project is considered Hanford's second highest priority behind glassifying wastes in the site's underground tanks.

Today is an interim Tri-Party Agreement deadline to remove all the fuel that originally was in the K West Basin.

Meanwhile, Fluor has begun moving the K East fuel to the K West Basin, because the K West Basin already has the equipment to process the fuel underwater and load it into specialized cylindrical transportation-and-storage containers called "multi-canister overpacks" or "MCOs."

The exact number of MCOs needed to move 1,053 tons of fuel is unclear. But previous Fluor estimates put that figure between 184 and 188. Meanwhile, Fluor expects to moved its 179th MCO today.

Overall, it is expected to take about 400 MCOs to move all 2,300 tons of fuel.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the lead regulator on the K Basins project. Appropriate EPA and DOE officials were not available Monday.