Hanford Site cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. has sealed a subcontract for construction of storage containers to hold cesium and strontium capsules.
Georgia-based nuclear materials services provider NAC International has received a $23 million contract to design and build 16 dry storage casks that will hold 1,936 highly radioactive cesium and strontium capsules now submerged at the Department of Energy site’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility (WESF).
Cask fabrication is scheduled to begin in fiscal 2019.
WESF was built in the early 1970s to hold radioactive isotopes of cesium and strontium that were removed from Hanford Site storage tanks in order to reduce the temperature of waste held inside the tanks. The capsules are kept in stainless steel containers.
Water-filled pool cells in WESF serve to cool the capsules and provide protection from radiation. However, “WESF is an aging facility with high operating costs, and represents one of the DOE complex’s largest risks in a beyond-expected magnitude earthquake or other similar type of accident,” according to a Nov. 4 CH2M press release.
Placing the capsules in dry storage should reduce the danger posed by the materials, as well as the cost of storage, until a permanent disposal method is set, the release states.
CH2M Hill is one of the prime remediation contractors at the former plutonium production site near Richland, Wash., focusing on cleanup of the Hanford Central Plateau. It has awarded over $2.4 billion in subcontracts since starting work in 2008.
