This four-minute video provides a visual overview of the Waste Treatment Plant's progress to-date.

A 50-ton shield door was installed April 22, 2010 at the High-Level Waste Facility. The shield door is in a key area of the facility and was installed to extremely tight tolerances, down to five-thousandths of an inch, or less than the diameter of a human hair.

The door stands 15 feet tall and 18 feet wide.

In October, 2009, the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) Project celebrated surpassing the 50-percent-complete mark. In celebration, each employee received a copy of this video, commemorating our progress through the years.

Excerpts of the video played before the presentation on day two of the 2008 All-Employee meetings. This video contains employee interviews and pictures.

On July 11, the environmental emissions stack for the Analytical Laboratory was set in place atop the facility, increasing its height to 119 feet. The 68-foot stack assembly will exhaust emissions from the Laboratory's ventilation systems, filtering radioactive and chemical contaminants from the air to ensure it meets strict regulations. Made of structural steel, the assembly contains three emission stacks and weighs approximately 140,000 pounds with a base that measures 16 feet by 20 feet.

Installation of the Pretreatment Engineering Platform began in late February, and the final pieces were installed in May. Housed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the PEP will test and confirm the effectiveness of select vit plant pretreatment processes on a larger scale than ever before. Testing is scheduled to begin in late 2008.

On March 24 an 81-foot tall, 14-foot wide Glass Former Silo was installed at Hanford's Vitrification Plant, permanently changing the skyline on-site. The silo, which will store and dispense silica during glass-making operations, weighs 51,300 pounds and is the tallest of the 13 silos needed at the plant. This is the third silo installed to-date. The silo was shipped to Hanford on a specially fabricated perimeter trailer and was in-transit for twelve days. The shipper had to travel only during day-light hours due to the load size. Each of the 13 silos will hold a different glass-forming material that will be dispensed to the vitrification facilities in the proper combinations for each batch of glass. The silos are being fabricated in Rothschild, Wisconsin by Dynamic Air, Inc.

The Waste Treatment Plant (Vit Plant) is the cornerstone of cleanup at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford site. It will provide a solution to Hanford's radioactive chemical waste from nearly 50 years of nuclear weapons production. The largest DOE construction project, the Vit Plant, once completed, will use a process known as vitrification to treat and stabilize the waste by blending it with molten glass and placing it in stainless steel canisters. This is a short video commemorating our accomplishments in 2007 as we move this first-of-a-kind plant closer to completion.

The Waste Treatment Plant (Vit Plant) is the cornerstone of cleanup at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford site. It will provide a solution to Hanford's radioactive chemical waste from nearly 50 years of nuclear weapons production. The largest DOE construction project, the Vit Plant, once completed, will use a process known as vitrification to treat and stabilize the waste by blending it with molten glass and placing it in stainless steel canisters.