The U.S. Energy Department is taking public comment through Nov. 6 on plans to remediate the 100-BC Area of the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The 100-BC Area stretches about 4.5 square miles along the Columbia River corridor and was home to two now-deactivated nuclear reactors that produced plutonium from the 1940s through the 1960s. The old reactors left behind large amounts of liquid and solid waste containing radionuclides and chemicals that contaminated soil and groundwater, according to agency materials.
The Energy Department’s preferred alternative under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) would cost an estimated $23 million. The preferred plan would involve a mixture of instiutional controls, active cleanup, and no action for more than 100 sites in the area.
The most expensive of the six options could cost an estimated $220 million.
The Energy Department and its contractors have already torn down most of the buildings around 100-BC and remediated 82 sites. Work crews dug up the contaminated material and moved it to the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility on Hanford’s Central Plateau. Roughly 3 million tons of soil and debris have been removed from the site since 1995, according to DOE.
The comment period began Monday. The Energy Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will use the input to draft a record of decision formalizing the cleanup approach. The public comment notice itself did not list a timeline for publication of the ROD or the ensuing cleanup. There is no public hearing currently scheduled. Comments can be submitted via email to [email protected].
