Having workers use supplied air respirators with lines that snake across the ground rather than heavy air tanks could be an option for certain tasks at the Hanford Site’s radioactive waste storage tank farms, according to tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions.
Workers have been testing use of air lines, including at the HAMMER training center and at the AP Tank Farm, at the Department of Energy cleanup site near Richland, Wash. The lines are attached to a manifold, which draws air from a compressor or large air bottle supply located in a clean environment.
Supplied air respirators are required for most work inside Hanford tank farms as protection against chemical vapors, and workers usually carry 30- to 40-pound oxygen tanks. An air-line system was tested as a means to ease the physical strain on workers, which could reduce injuries and speed up work. Air bottles might last just 30 minutes, which includes the time spent walking in and out of a tank farm to a task area, which limits efficiency.
The evaluation concluded that possibly 5 to 10 percent of tasks in tank farms are suitable for use of the air lines, such as hand excavation and long-term instrument monitoring. They could be a good alternative for small crews in a central area on simple to moderately difficult jobs, according to WRPS. Conditions that would limit widespread use include obstacles that workers would need to manage the air lines around; the length of hose line required; and having many workers involved, increasing the risk of tangled air lines.
No work in the tank farms is currently planned using the lines, but “the evaluation concluded air-line systems would be a good tool for WRPS to have available as an option for workers to use in performing certain tasks,” said Bobby Nelson, the WRPS tank farm projects manager who oversaw the evaluations.
Union workers from both the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council and the building trades helped develop the training exercises conducted at HAMMER to familiarize workers with the equipment. They started with simple tasks for small crews with limited obstructions and progressed to tasks using large crews, long air hoses, and multiple obstructions. Then the system was tested at the AP Tank Farm.
“AP Farm provided a good opportunity for workers to be on an air-line system without a large number of obstructions, unlike C Farm,” Nelson said.
