Open-air demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state is scheduled to resume today after being suspended for more than 15 months. It will be the first demolition at the plant since the airborne spread of radioactive contamination was discovered in December 2017.
Workers for Hanford cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation were ready to resume demolition on Tuesday, but the day proved too windy to proceed.
In September, CH2M restarted some lower-hazard work, loading out the demolition debris from the main section of the plant that had remained on the ground since December 2017. Last week, workers completed load out of 2,500 tons of rubble and debris for disposal at the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility in central Hanford.
During the Cold War, plutonium came into the plant in a liquid solution for conversion into solid forms that could be sent to a nuclear weapons production plant.
Demolition will begin on the least contaminated areas of the building, including a remaining vault that was used to store plutonium. The lower-risk demolition could be completed in early July, followed by demolition on more highly contaminated parts of the plant.
“We’re satisfied that they have procedures in place to allow the lower-risk demolition to proceed,” said Stephanie Schleif, project manager for the plant for the Washington state Department of Ecology. The state agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will have to lift a stop work order to allow the higher-risk demolition.
After demolition is completed, rubble from the highly contaminated Plutonium Reclamation Facility at the plant will be loaded out.
Under a tentative schedule from last summer, the restart of demolition was planned for October 2018 and completion of demolition and load out at the end of May 2019. Work was delayed first by staff turnover as better paying jobs became available at the Hanford waste tank farms and then by an unusually snowy winter.
The current schedule projects completion in late September.
