Radioactive contamination has been found on eight vehicles that were parked at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant after a spread of contamination in recent days.
Four of the vehicles belonged to employees working on plant demolition and two of them might have already been contaminated when workers left Hanford for the weekend on Friday night after completing demolition of the plant’s highly contaminated Plutonium Reclamation Facility, according to cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. The contractor has offered to survey the employees’ homes for contamination.
The federal government owns the four other vehicles. One of those vehicles was found to have interior contamination.
The vehicles are being decontaminated and released to owners, CH2M said in a message to employees Tuesday afternoon. More than 100 vehicles were surveyed as employees left work Monday night.
After contamination was found Monday outside the project shift office, a portable office with heavy personnel foot traffic, workers were told to remain inside the portable offices serving the demolition until more radiological surveying could be done. The last of the workers were allowed to leave the offices at about 6:30 p.m. The workers were surveyed for contamination, with none found except on the boot of the radiological control technician who found the contamination outside the shift office. No contamination was found within the office trailers.
No demolition has been done on the Plutonium Finishing Plant since Friday, and work remains suspended, according to CH2M. Some work was done early this week to secure the rubble pile left from final demolition of the reclamation facility. Activities at the plant site on Tuesday were focused on surveying for and controlling contamination.
