CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation must suspend work in radiologically contaminated areas of Building 324 at the Hanford Site in Washington state until it gets a handle on certain “negative trend,” according to a recent order from the U.S. Energy Department.
The DOE’s Richland Operations Office “expects that workers at Hanford are protected from personnel radiological contamination while accomplishing our important Hanford mission,” according to the Nov. 14 letter from federal managers at the site to Ty Blackford, the cleanup contractor’s president and CEO.
The letter, obtained by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, signed by Richland Deputy Manager Joe Franco and Contracting Officer Jenise Connerly, was prompted by a Nov. 14 incident in which a worker suffered skin contamination at a soil excavation project at Building 324, the Chemical Materials Engineering Laboratory. For decades, the 300 Area was the center of Hanford’s radiological research and nuclear fuel fabrication efforts.
“Cleanup work in radiologically controlled areas inside the building will not resume without proper DOE oversight and approval,” Hanford Manager Brian Vance said in a memo this week. Building 324 is one of the last buildings yet to be demolished in the 300 area. and there is highly radioactive soil in the area.
This is the latest episode of worker contamination at the Central Plateau cleanup project in the past year, according to the letter. “Although individually the contamination levels have been low and no dose has been assigned to workers, collectively the number of personnel contamination events indicate a negative trend,” Franco and Connerly wrote.
It is essential that CH2M address the problem, the Hanford managers said. As a result, only a minimum of work necessary to maintain safety should be done around Building 324, the Energy Department said in its letter. The document did not provide details on how much of a work reduction this involves.
A group of subject matter experts from CH2M and parent company Jacobs are developing a strategy to combat the problem, Blackford told employees in a Wednesday memo.
