A Jacobs subsidiary this week is commencing the final phase of tearing down the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
“I am proud to report that our team has safely completed lower-risk demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant’s (PFP) Main Processing Facility,” CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation President and CEO Ty Blackford said in a memo to company employees on Oct. 31.
The lower-risk work, which included loading rubble from previously demolished structures, was completed Oct. 30, according to the company.
Demolition of high-hazard facilities started in 2016 and was about 80% finished in December 2017 when work was suspended after an airborne spread of radioactive contamination at the site. A total of 42 Hanford workers inhaled or ingested small amounts of radioactive material at PFP during two separate incidents in 2017.
Addressing the contamination set the project schedule back about nine months, according to CH2M spokesman Dieter Bohrmann.
The PFP was a 1-square-mile complex of buildings, including the Z Plant, which started operation in 1949 and provided Hanford’s final phase of plutonium production for the U.S. nuclear weapons. The Main Processing Facility took irradiated rods from reactors within the plutonium complex. Operations ceased around 1987.
The final phase of PFP demolition involves removal of the Main Processing Facility’s two former processing lines, along with packaging and removing the remaining rubble from the Plutonium Reclamation Facility. This stage should continue through early next year, Blackford added.
About 600 cubic meters of rubble remains to be packaged and transferred to Hanford’s engineered landfill for permanent disposal. To date, about 1,800 cubic meters of debris from the Main Processing Facility has been disposed at the landfill, according to the company.
The CEO said the same heightened safety controls in place since lower-risk demolition started in September 2018 will continue into this next phase.
The Washington state Department of Ecology approved the final stage of work in June, but DOE and its contractor were only now ready to begin that phase, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the state agency. The Energy Department gave its approval for resumption of higher-risk work in an Aug. 16 letter from Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance.
The state expects the PFP building to be reduced to its slab by the end of February.
The contractor was still loading debris from the lower-risk area of the Main Processing Facility during the week that ended Oct. 27. Eleven containers of debris were shipped to an on-site landfill, according to a Hanford website that provides regular updates on the work.
The total cost of tearing down the Plutonium Finishing Plant is about $169 million, according to CH2M. The vendor forfeited about $39 million in potential fees for failing to complete demolition by the end of fiscal 2018.
