The Department of Energy schedule for demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state has slipped again.
The long-retired plant could be down to slab on grade by mid-September, according to the latest projection. In December, Hanford officials said staff turnover had slowed work but that as employees become familiar with the work the pace of the project could pick up enough to be finished by July.
That might have been overly optimistic, said Tom Teynor, DOE project director for the plant. “Slow, steady progress” is the plan, he said.
As recently as July 2018, DOE said it intended to have the plant torn down to its foundations by May of this year. The current plan is to not exhaust workers with excessive overtime, but to proceed at a deliberate pace even as new workers gain experience.
With increased funding for DOE’s Office of River Protection in the fiscal 2019 budget, Hanford tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions recently hired about 25 nuclear chemical operators and plans to hire 25 more soon. The additional positions have provided an opportunity for union demolition workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant to transfer to positions at the tank farms that might pay about $10 more an hour than the demolition jobs, Teynor said.
The cleanup contractor at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., has organized training sessions for different groups of new hires involving a month of classroom work and time in the field with experienced mentors. It has agreed to pay mentors the higher wages they could earn at the tank farms to keep them at the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
Demolition began in late 2016 and has been halted since December 2017 after a spread of radioactive contamination. The turnover in employees – roughly 40 of the 180 working on the project — has delayed the restart of demolition until late February or early March.
In mid-September, DOE authorized CH2M Hill to resume some hazardous work at the plant that during the Cold War helped produce plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The first task, which is continuing, was to remove demolition debris left on the ground and unpackaged at the main part of the plant since demolition halted more than a year ago.
Low-risk demolition should resume in late February or March. Workers will tear down some less contaminated parts of the main processing plant. They are now practicing different demolition techniques at a mock-up set up not far from the plant. The Energy Department expects higher-risk demolition of highly contaminated portions to begin in late May. That will be followed by loading out the highly contaminated rubble from a mostly demolished plant annex, the Plutonium Reclamation Facility, with possible completion in mid-September.
The last legally binding milestone for demolition, under the Tri-Party Agreement that governs cleanup at Hanford, called for having the plant down to slab on grade by of fiscal 2017. But with that milestone not achievable the focus has been on completing the work safely.
