Demolition of the shuttered vitrification facility at the West Valley Demonstration Project near Buffalo, N.Y., got underway last week, according to the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM).
The West Valley Demonstration Project involves cleanup of a former commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant that shut down in the early 1970s. Part of the project, as required by law, involved solidification of high-level waste from the site. The vitrification facility converted roughly 600,000 gallons of high-level waste into a glass form for storage before halting operations in 2002.
During the past two years, prime cleanup contractor CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley (CHBWV) has been preparing for the demolition project, including surveying radiation levels inside the plant and extracting most equipment and piping.
About 15,000 cubic feet of material was removed from the plant, according to a fact sheet from the Office of Environmental Management. “Only 1 gram of radioactive material” was still in accessible parts of the plant prior to teardown, the office said.
Grand Island, N.Y.-based American DND will perform the demolition, which is expected to employ 35 workers and take about eight months, EM said.
About 6,700 tons of low-level radioactive waste is expected to be generated via the demolition project. That will fill roughly 450 waste containers that will be shipped to a federal disposal facility.
The estimated cost of the project was not immediately available.
Multiple loads of contaminated vitrification equipment from the plant were sent last fall to Waste Control Specialists storage complex in Texas, Weapons Complex Monitor has reported.
