It would take $623 million to completely shut down the Fast Flux test Facility by a proposed 2013 target date.

That proposal -- the latest by Fluor Hanford -- would close the FFTF 11 years ahead of the Department of Energy's current timetable and for half the cost DOE had predicted.

Fluor's proposal calls for $60 million annually starting in the 2004 fiscal year to decommission the test reactor. The proposal was sent to DOE on Oct. 28. The Herald received a copy from DOE on Monday, following a Freedom of Information Act request.

Fluor's plan assumes the FFTF would receive $36.1 million in fiscal 2003, which began Oct. 1, and $60 million annually each subsequent year.

"Insufficient funding will result in project delay and increased total project costs," the plan said.

In September, Fluor submitted a proposal that would close the FFTF by 2009 for a total cost of $543 million. DOE rejected that proposal because it had costs escalating up to $141.9 million in 2005 before starting to drop. An FFTF budget of more than $100 million a year has been considered unlikely.

The Oct. 28 plan is Fluor's second proposal. Information was not available Monday on DOE's reaction to the new plan.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations ordered the FFTF to be closed because not enough missions could be found to economically justify restarting it.

DOE was prepared to start draining liquid sodium from the reactor's cooling system four weeks ago, but Benton County filed an injunction in federal court to halt the work so the county could continue hunting for a private company interested in buying the reactor to produce medical isotopes.

DOE agreed to delay beginning the sodium draining until March 12.

Fluor's latest plan assumes that draining sodium from the secondary cooling system, along with washing and removing spent nuclear fuel, will begin in 2003. Numerous other activities were juggled or delayed to meet the new plan's budget limit of $60 million a year.

Fluor's latest plan also has significantly less budget cushion for unexpected problems than September's.

The plan predicts Fluor will employ about 260 people at the FFTF in fiscal 2003. That is expected to creep up to slightly fewer than 300 people in fiscal 2005. The work force is then scheduled to gradually drop to about 160 in fiscal 2009, then fluctuate until hitting about 140 in fiscal 2013.