PHOENIX— Planning by the Department of Energy and its contractors allowed the Hanford Site in Washington state to withstand the impact of recent wind gusts in excess of 80 miles per hour, the boss of the landlord services provider said here Wednesday.
“The massive windstorm” on Feb. 20 knocked out of service about 13 miles of high-voltage power lines and dozens of transformers, which partially disrupted Hanford operations for six days, said Robert Wilkinson, president of Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions.
The windstorm also damaged six power poles, knocking out power to about 45 mobile offices in the middle of the Hanford Site, according to DOE. The wind speed in the central part of the site was around 65 miles per hour, according to a DOE spokesperson.
A few years earlier, Wilkinson estimated, the down time would have been more like 45 to 90 days. The head of the site’s landlord contractor spoke Wednesday during a panel discussion about how cleanup of the former plutonium production complex in eastern Washington state might allow clean energy producers to move into the complex in the future.
Repairs and deployment of backup equipment started promptly and that was not “happenstance,” Wilkinson said of the extreme weather that hit Hanford a couple of weeks before the Waste Management Symposia began here this week. The site had some backup transformers on hand which limited the extent of the power disruption, he added.
Hanford, the Office of Environmental Management’s biggest most expensive cleanup site, has been preparing for around-the-clock operations of its Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. The facility, which Bechtel National is building, will solidify liquid radioactive waste from the site’s underground tanks into a stable glass form.
The planning for 24/7 operations has tightened coordination between DOE, Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, Washington River Protection Solutions and Central Plateau Cleanup, among others, and came in handy when the entire site was confronted with extreme winds and below-freezing temperatures, Wilkinson said.
Hanford planners try to do a post-event on such events, to better “prepare for the next thing,” said Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance.
Vance said that, as site manager, he is acutely aware that any big accidents at the nuclear facility can make national or even international news and conceivably affect the business climate for Washington state and the Pacific Northwest.
