January 18, 2016

Glove Box Removal Running Late at Hanford

By ExchangeMonitor

Removing the last of two large, radiologically contaminated glove boxes at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant — one of the final steps necessary for demolition of the nearly 70-year-old facility — could take up to three months longer than expected, the Energy Department said last week.

As recently as November, DOE said it expected to remove both of the Plutonium Finishing Plant’s high-holdup glove boxes by the end of 2015. Now, that may not happen until March, the agency’s Office of Environmental Management said in an online news bulletin.

“Workers anticipate removing this glove box in the first quarter of this year,” clearing the way for demolition to begin in March, DOE wrote in the notice.

The delay means DOE’s margin of error for demolishing the entire Plutonium Finishing Plant in fiscal 2016, which concludes Sept. 30, is slimmer than before. However, the agency is standing by that goal.

Likewise, a DOE spokesman in a Jan. 15 email said “demolition is still planned to begin in the spring and be completed by the end of 2016.” In its Jan. 14 news bulletin, DOE said demolition will take about six months to complete.

A spokesman for Hanford prime plateau remediation contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. deferred to DOE for comment.

The two-story glove boxes, one of which was removed in 2015, are among the most hazardous and highly contaminated structures at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, DOE has said. The agency expected it would be difficult to safely remove them; DOE and CH2M, deliberately scheduled glove box removal for late in the cleanup to take advantage of lessons learned elsewhere on the job.

The Plutonium Finishing Plant was used for decades as the final step in the production of the nuclear-weapon material at Hanford. Additional current efforts to prepare for the facility’s demolition include decontamination of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility canyon and extraction of contaminated ventilation ducts from the plant.

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