The Department of Energy’s manager for the Hanford Site in Washington state expects the stabilization of three crumbling underground waste structures near the Plutonium Finishing Plant to be shored up by the end of January.
“We expect to complete that project by the end of January,” Hanford’s site manager Brian Vance told a meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board Dec. 9..
In April, Jacobs subsidiary CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation awarded a $3.9 million subcontract to engineering firm White Shield, of Pasco, Wash., to design and install engineered grout at three contaminated sites. The 216-Z-2 Crib, 216-Z-9 Crib, and 241-Z-361 Settling Tank, built between the 1940s and 1960s.
All received liquid waste during Hanford’s plutonium production days during the Cold War and are today in danger of collapse.
“We’ve had some weather challenges … from an inversion that caused radon levels to be too high,” Vance said. A temperature inversion is a weather oddity where warmer air rises to a higher altitude than cooler air. Normally, air temperature decreases with an increase in altitude.
The DOE is shoring up the three old structures in order to avoid a repeat of the May 2017 partial collapse of Tunnel 1 at Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant. The DOE took comment in March and April on the grouting plan for the structures adjacent to the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
The stabilization project is one of the few remaining jobs left at the demolished Plutonium Finishing Plant, Vance said. A small wall must be removed and rubble must be collected, he added.
