Federal and state regulators this week directed the U.S. Energy Department not to resume radiologically hazardous demolition at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant until the agencies agree corrective actions are sufficient to protect workers and the public in the wake of a contamination spread.
Contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. suspended teardown on Dec. 17, following detection of a spread of radioactive contamination after the last of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility was brought down in an open-air demolition using heavy equipment. The Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have the authority to call a halt to work as soon as it restarts under the Tri-Party Agreement governing environmental remediation at Hanford.
The Ecology Department has become increasingly concerned as the extent of the detected spread of contamination has increased, said Alex Smith, manager of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program.
At least 16 government and contractor vehicles are known to be contaminated, with some vehicles still to be surveyed. In addition, seven worker cars with exterior contamination were found in December. Those workers’ homes also were surveyed for contamination, with none found.
The number of Hanford workers requesting bioassays, to check for inhaled or ingested radioactive particles, increased to 268 this week.
Ecology and EPA outlined their concerns in a joint letter sent to DOE on Tuesday. The letter says additional radioactive contamination spread within control areas was discovered as recently as Jan. 3. That indicates “the contamination has not yet been controlled,” according to the environmental agencies. The contamination is suspected to have spread from the demolition rubble pile left from the last of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility demolition, even though the pile has repeatedly been covered with fixative and layers of soil.
Ecology and EPA have given DOE until Jan. 26 to provide more information on the situation, including detailed bioassay results, log books detailing contamination control, information about foggers used for contamination controls, worker lapel air monitor readings, and a briefing summarizing corrective actions that have been developed.
“We take this very seriously,” Tom Teynor, DOE project director at the plant, said at a Tuesday committee meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board. “The release was inexcusable. We are doing everything in our power to prevent it from happening again.”
On Sunday, the access control area around the plant was widely expanded to encompass not only the Plutonium Finishing Plant complex but other nearby facilities, including U Plant and three waste storage tank farms. Several roads are within the access control area, including Camden Avenue, where contamination was found to have spread across the road from the plant complex.
Hanford workers were told the new control boundary was not a radiological control area, although personnel may request a courtesy check for contamination when they leave the zone. Instead, it is an area where Plutonium Finishing Plant officials are controlling access to ensure employees are aware of any work conducted nearby and that contamination recovery work does not affect other cleanup projects at Hanford or vice versa. Only government vehicles are allowed in the control area. Plutonium Finishing Plant workers are parking at the 200 West Pump and Treat facility about a mile away and being shuttled to the plant.
CH2M is bringing in corporate expertise as it leads a root cause analysis of the contamination spread, the Hanford Advisory Board panel was told. Proposed corrective actions will be reviewed by a panel of independent experts being assembled by Doug Shoop, manager of DOE’s Hanford Richland Operations Office manager. The Department of Ecology has asked to sit in on the expert panel meetings.
Both demolition and load out of demolition rubble have been halted at the plant. “We are not going to go ahead until we are sure we can do it without another release,” Teynor said. It is not currently known when work might resume.
The plant was required to be torn down to slab on grade by the end of fiscal 2017 on Sept. 30. The Energy Department notified the regulators it would not meet the deadline. As demolition continues to be delayed months into fiscal 2018, the cost of the project is increasing and not covered in the current DOE budget. Teynor told advisory board members that finding additional money for the project should not be a problem because completing demolition is a priority.
The only part of the Plutonium Finishing Plant still standing includes the area with the main processing lines, where glove boxes were used to turn liquid in a plutonium solution into pucks or oxide powder for shipment to nuclear weapons plants. Work continued at the plant complex this week to place fixative on possible contaminated areas, including roofs of buildings supporting the demolition project, and to cover areas where contamination spread with soil.
