Among the few details released publicly about the changes contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation will make to its strategy for tearing down the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site was tucked into a recent report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which says the company will now remove additional glove boxes before knocking the Cold War-era building down.
Completion of demolition to slab on grade — meaning all that will be left of the facility is the concrete slab on which it is built — was recently delayed a year to Sept. 30, 2017. The Washington state Department of Ecology made the announcement on July 14. Preparation for demolition started in 2009, when the last of the plutonium in the building was shipped to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
At the time the delay was announced, the state did not announce whether, or how, DOE and its contractor might alter their approach to the job. The work has proved technically challenging and at times dangerous for workers at the former plutonium production site near Richland, Wash. However, a weekly site report dated July 1 and uploaded last week to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board website offers a glimpse at the more thorough approach the contractor plans to take.
“The contractor modified their approach and will require removal of additional high hazard glove boxes from the upper levels of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility prior to demolition,” reads the report. “This action provides a more controlled approach and reduces material at risk during the demolition phase.”
In a Thursday email, a spokesperson from DOE Hanford said there are eight of these glove boxes: “three column glove boxes, four miscellaneous treatment glove boxes and one conveyor glove box.”
Previously, the spokesperson said, these glove boxes would have been removed during the demolition.
“At no time were the glove boxes simply going to be demolished with the building structure,” the spokesperson wrote. “Removal of these glove boxes during the pre-demolition phase reduces handling risks because of the more controlled approach for extraction, eliminates the need to protect these glove boxes from falling debris during demolition, and streamlines the demolition progression by eliminating planned pauses to remove glove boxes.”
The Plutonium Reclamation Facility is part of the Plutonium Finishing Plant: a building that prepared plutoium for use in U.S. nuclear weapons and that has been called the most dangerous demolition project in the entire DOE weapons complex.
CH2M Plateau Remediation Co. is responsible for tearing down PFP, under a 10-year Hanford Site Central Plateau Remediation cost-plus contract awarded in 2008 and potentially worth $5.6 billion.
