Over the past year, the Department of Energy decided to change the location of a planned fire station at the Hanford Site in Washington state because similar facilities are being developed in nearby Richland, Wash., an agency spokesperson said.
Rather than building in Hanford’s 400 area as initially planned, managers at the 580-square-mile Hanford Site have decided to build the new fire station at the 200 East Area in the eastern part of the Central Plateau, near the Waste Treatment Plant and tank farms, a DOE spokesperson said via email Tuesday.
The 400 area is in the southeastern corner of the former plutonium production complex, not far from the site of Energy Northwest’s Columbia nuclear power plant. The 200 East area, however, sits near the geographic middle of the sprawling site. The distance between the sites is about 11 miles, the spokesperson said.
“Since the time the 400 Area site was selected for the new fire station, the City of Richland completed two new fire stations near the southern end of the site and Pacific Northwest National Lab entered into an agreement with the city to be serviced by one of those stations,” the spokesperson said.
The developments led DOE “to reassess the need for a new station in the 400 Area” and decide instead that the fire station would be more beneficial to emergency response planning in the 200 East Area, the DOE spokesperson said.
“For decades the Hanford cleanup mission will focus on the 200 Area plateau,” according to the Joe Biden administration’s fiscal 2024 budget justification for the Hanford Site. “Therefore, a decision has been made to relocate the new fire station from the 400 Area to the Hanford Plateau.”
Also, changing market conditions led DOE to increase its estimated project cost of the new fire center to $40.3 million up from the $23 million figure from February 2021, according to the budget justification. The project now has a completion date of 2027, according to the document.
The new DOE fire facility will have four bays to up to eight emergency response vehicles; an area to test and decontaminate equipment; 24-hour living space for up to a dozen Hanford firefighters per shift; along with parking, office space and up-to-date communications gear, according to the budget document.
