Demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state will not restart this month, as earlier projected.
It has been a year since the Department of Energy halted demolition and work to load out unpackaged contaminated debris at the plant, following discovery of a second spread of radioactive particles. At the time all that remained of 90 permanent structures was a portion of the main processing plant and some stub walls of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility.
In mid-September, DOE authorized cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Remediation Co. to resume some hazardous work at the plant that once helped produce plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The first task was to remove demolition debris left on the ground and unpackaged at the main part of the plant since December 2017. The agency had expected load out of that debris, which began in early October, to take about six weeks.
Instead, just 25 percent of that rubble had been removed and packaged for disposal as of this week, according to DOE. The rubble must be removed, and the Energy Department assess that work, before actual demolition can begin. Teardown is not expected to resume until February or early March, starting with an area of the plant with the least radioactive contamination
The project has had high turnover, with about 40 of 180 workers on the project either leaving or planning to leave. Many have transferred to other jobs on-site, including at the radioactive waste storage tank farms, after Hanford started the fiscal year with a strong budget of $2.4 billion. Some available jobs are for Hanford projects that offer more stability and longevity, as Plutonium Finishing Plant work will ramp down as demolition is completed.
Rubble recovery since October has proceeded slowly as workers new to the project are trained and mentored, but Hanford officials expect the pace to pick up as new workers become more familiar with the project.
“DOE leadership is focusing on assuring that demolition activities are performed in a manner that assures the safety of the public and the workers while protecting the environment,” the Energy Department said in a statement.
The Washington state Department of Ecology, the regulator on the project, is eager to see the plant torn down to slab on grade, but “our primary concern is the work proceed with minimal risk,” said Randy Bradbury, Ecology spokesman.
If the pace of work does pick up, the plant could be down to slab on grade by July 2019. In July, DOE told the Hanford Advisory Board that its projected date for the plant to be torn down was the end of May.
Demolition of the plant is part of the central Hanford cleanup work assigned to CH2M under a contract valued for the first 10 years at $5.8 billion, plus $1.3 billion of economic stimulus work under the Obama administration. At the end of September, it received a contract extension for up to a year with an estimated value of $500 million.
The last date for which CH2M could earn extra fee under its contract for timely completion of the project has passed. The contractor was eligible for $51 million in fees if it completed demolition of the plant in early 2015. However, demolition of the plant did not start until late 2016 after extensive clean out. The available fee gradually decreased since early 2015 to $12 million at the end of September 2018, with no further reductions built into the contract after that.
After CH2M finishes demolition of less contaminated parts of the main processing facility, it will need approval both from DOE and its regulators — Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — for the higher-hazard work remaining. That includes demolishing the processing lines in the plant’s main facility and then loading out the rubble pile left from demolition of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility, an annex on one end of the main facility.
During the Cold War plutonium came into the plant in a liquid solution and was processed into solid forms that could be sent to weapons production plants. The Plutonium Reclamation Facility was added to increase production by recovering plutonium from scrap material.
The Plutonium Reclamation Facility was expected to be the most heavily contaminated part of the plant. When open-air demolition using heavy equipment was almost completed on it in December 2017, radioactive particles were discovered in the surrounding area. Concerns were raised in a root-cause analysis of the incident that contamination became airborne because the demolition debris piles at the plant were not adequately controlled.
Bioassays showed 11 workers had inhaled or ingested small amounts of radioactive material linked to work at the Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Those were in addition to 31 workers contaminated in an airborne radioactive material incident at the plant six months earlier. Also in December, specks of contamination were found on seven employee cars, at least two of which had been driven home, and airborne contamination was discovered to have spread off the Plutonium Finishing Plant campus to other areas.
