The Central Plateau Cleanup Co. will begin cocooning the K East Reactor later this year, Brian Stickney, the Department of Energy’s deputy Hanford manager for the agency’s Richland office, said last week.
Stickney spoke June 16 at a public briefing on Hanford in general for the public. The briefing was conducted via Internet with about 150 people watching.
Overall, Hanford has nine World War II and Cold War plutonium production reactors with the last shutting down in 1987. So far, six have been cocooned. “Cocooning” refers to the two- to three-year process of demolishing all the outer buildings, filling in the spent fuel pools, and sealing off the main reactor core building.
The concept calls for the cocooned reactor core to sit for at least 75 years for the radioactivity to decay enough to safely demolish the core. The interior of the core building is accessed once every five years for safety inspections.
Stickney did not say how much cocooning the K East Reactor would cost. He also did not say when cocooning of the K West Reactor is expected to begin. DOE could not provide answers to this question by deadline. Both reactors began operating in 1955 with the K West Reactor shutting down in 1970, and the K East Reactor closing in 1971.
The ninth reactor is B Reactor, which is the Manhattan Project’s first. Industrial-sized reactor that created the plutonium for the Trinity and Nagasaki atomic bombs. It is being preserved as a historical site.
