The Energy Department and its contractors expect demolition of the X-326 Process Building at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio to begin in July 2020, federal managers said March 7 at the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Ariz.
Most deactivation work has been completed at the building built in the 1950s to enrich uranium, first for atomic weapons and later for commercial nuclear power reactors, officials with DOE’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office said during a panel discussion at the conference.
“I’m excited about the skyline changes that are going to be occurring very soon,” said Jeff Bettinger, Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant lead for PPPO.
X-326 will be the first of three 30-acre process buildings to be taken down through 2034. “We have already started some of the pre-demolition work with asbestos removal” at X-326, Bettinger said.
In May or June, site cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth is expected to report that as much fissile material as possible has been removed from the building. A few months later, workers will turn off the electric power to the building, said Zack Smith, program manager with PPPO.
Over 7,000 large components have already been removed from the building. Pre-demolition operations are due to be completed by Sept. 30, with demolition scheduled for 2020 to 2023.
Demolition of the X-333 building should start in 2023 and be complete in 2027. Tearing down the X-330 facility should start around 2031 and be finished in 2034, according to slides in the PPPO presentation.
Portsmouth’s On-Site Waste Disposal Cell is scheduled to be operational in 2020, and it would start taking construction debris from X-326 in 2021. The $900 million cell will take 2 million cubic yards of waste from building demolition at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site.
