The Department of Energy may miss the Sept. 30 deadline to tear down the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., an agency spokesperson said late Thursday, and a new schedule is still in the works.
“DOE is in discussions with regulators on a potential change to the milestone for completing the demolition of the PFP to slab-on-grade,” an agency spokesperson said by email. “DOE would determine any change in the schedule for demolition of the PFP in our discussions with the contractor and negotiations with the regulatory agencies.”
In January, DOE said PFP demolition would take six months to complete. Demolition has not started yet, in part because the agency and its contractor, CH2M Plateau Remediation Co., did not finish dismantling a pair of large, radio-contaminated glove boxes until late February — nearly three months later than DOE had anticipated that project would take as recently as November.
Hanford sitewide cleanup is governed by the Tri-Party Agreement: a three-way compact between DOE, Washington state, and the Environmental Protection Agency. A spokesperson for the Washington Department of Ecology did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the matter. A spokesperson for contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation Company referred questions about the cleanup schedule to DOE.
The pace of work at PFP has slowed somewhat in the past year, with incidents of worker skin contamination and even very low levels of internal worker contamination reported on-site. CH2M replaced top project managers in February, and now requires workers to wear protective clothing and breathing apparatus for some PFP tasks. In addition workers may not perform multiple tasks requiring protective gear at once.
PFP came online in 1949. The plant turned liquid plutonium nitrate solution into solid, so-called buttons that then could be shipped to other facilities and plugged into nuclear weapons. The final cache of PFP plutonium was shipped out of the Hanford in 2009, after which focus shifted to cleanup. The plant will be torn down, and the resulting debris removed from the site until all that remain on the ground in Richland are the slabs of the facility’s concrete floors.
Although DOE and CH2M may not finish PFP demolition by the end of the federal government’s 2016 fiscal year, they are at least trying to start it before then. A newsletter published Monday by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said demolition was still “scheduled to begin later this year.”
Before demolition can start, a team of outside experts must certify the PFP is ready to be torn down as part of a readiness assessment tentatively scheduled for July 18, a CH2M spokesperson said.
The CH2M spokesperson did not identify the outside experts who will conduct the review, but said the panel will comprise “industry experts in nuclear operations, nuclear safety, emergency preparedness, radiological control, D&D, training, work control and related core requirements.”
DOE has long said the Hanford PFP is one of the most dangerous buildings at one of the most challenging cleanups in the entire weapons complex.
