The Department of Energy on Tuesday said it had extracted three glove boxes from the so-called “McCluskey Room” at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. The move is a key step toward razing the plant as part of the ongoing cleanup of the former U.S. nuclear weapons support site, according to a DOE press release. The Finishing Plant was used for decades to process plutonium into solid and powder forms for shipment to U.S. nuclear-weapon manufacturing sites. The McCluskey Room, a component of the 242-Z Americium Recovery Facility, received its nickname following a 1976 accident in which a vessel within a glove box burst, coating technician Harold McCluskey with glass, resin beads, nitric acid, and high levels of americium-241. He survived the incident, living another 11 years before dying of unrelated causes.
The contaminated room largely remained sealed off until 2010, when workers with contractor CH2M Hill entered to begin extracting some combustible materials and equipment. Over 200 entries have been made into the room, with workers removing two of the original five glove boxes several years ago, DOE said Tuesday in written responses to questions. CH2M started final remediation last September amid sustained hazards that include radioactive particles in the air and on surfaces, according to the DOE press release. Workers have completed 84 percent of the work needed to prepare the Plutonium Finishing Plant for its anticipated destruction by Sept. 30, 2016, the release states. One priority now is the extraction of multiple chemical processing tanks from the McCluskey Room, along with taking out exhaust ventilation ductwork and plutonium processing gear from the Finishing Plant.
“We continue to work toward safely demolishing major facilities by September 2016, aligned with the Tri-Party Agreement milestone to demolish the PFP to slab on grade by that time. Safely removing these three glove boxes represents important progress in cleaning out and demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant by that date,” DOE said in its written comments. “Most of the large pieces of processing equipment have been removed from the plant. Several of the buildings have been torn down. Work continues to remove ducting, process piping and other infrastructure and cleaning out the building.”
