After receiving final go-ahead from the state, contractor North Wind Portage started demolition this week on one the four remaining contaminated buildings within the Department of Energy’s portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, California.
Demolition of Building 4038 started Monday and will take a month to complete, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control said in a March 11 email announcement. DOE will tear down Buildings 4057, 4462, 4463, and 4024 this year.
The state agency in a March 4 letter approved DOE plans for demolition of the remaining buildings at the Radioactive Materials Handling Facility within the DOE’s Energy Technology Engineering Center at the Simi Valley location.
While already approved for demolition, Building 4024 won’t come down “until the dry season,” Department of Toxic Substances Control spokesman Russ Edmondson said in a Thursday email. The first quarter of the year tends to be Southern California’s wettest period.
DOE’s federal project director John Jones received the green light in the March 4 letter from Steven Becker, chief of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Branch with the Department of Toxic Substances Control.
The DOE contractor will take down the above-ground structures under a 2020 amendment to a prior consent order on the Santa Susana cleanup. Ten of 18 buildings left at the Energy Technology Engineering Center were dismantled as of last November. About half of the remainder have since come down, and the DOE contractor is commencing work on the few that remain. Of the 1960s and 1970s era structures left at the Radioactive Materials Handling Facility, a couple are little more than “sheds,” DOE Office of Environmental Management’s No. 2 official, Todd Shrader, has said.
Environmental and landowner interests in Southern California have pushed for prompt demolition of the remaining buildings at DOE’s 90-acre Energy Technology Engineering Center for fear of another wildfire in the region, which could spread airborne contamination.
The state agency “will oversee the demolition and disposal of the resulting debris to ensure the activities comply with the 2010 administrative order on Consent” and related legal requirements, according to the letter.
The debris to the buildings will be taken to EnergySolutions in Clive, Utah, which is licensed to receive low-level radioactive waste, Edmondson said.
The DOE now has agreements in place with California to take down all of the 18 final buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center listed in an October 2019 record of decision by the federal agency. But California agencies reminded DOE the state must sign off on any demolition plans. The state and the federal agency reached accord on 10 of the 18 last May, and agreements followed for the remainder.
