The Department of Energy’s Jacobs-led contractor for remediation of the West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York could begin taking down the Main Plant Process Building this year, a manager said at a public meeting Wednesday.
Deactivation of the contaminated facility should be finished later this fall, although the schedule could always slip due to COVID-19 staffing restrictions, John Rendall, president and general manager of CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley, said in a presentation during a public meeting at a local fire hall.
The slide presentation did not list a more exact date for demolition.
“The exact start of demolition remains difficult to predict [given the pandemic], but we anticipate it will not start until the first quarter of calendar year 2022,” a spokesperson for the DOE contractor said in an email late Monday.
The Main Plant Process Building — where the main spent fuel reprocessing work took place for six years ending in 1972 — is the most significant structure left to tear down at the site, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from January.
Nuclear Fuel Services reprocessed 640 metric tons of spent fuel at West Valley, much of it from the Hanford Site in Washington state, to recover plutonium and uranium, according to GAO.
Initially DOE expected to start open-air demolition in 2018, but the feds delayed those plans after a 2017 contamination episode during open-air demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford, according to GAO. The DOE said it is using lessons it learned at Hanford for the West Valley teardown.
“Our approach incorporates best practices and lessons learned from across the DOE complex including the use of deliberately planned and sequenced demolition and implementation of robust work controls,” according to the contractor’s slide presentation. The CH2M-led team has set up a system of ambient air monitors around West Valley. The contractor expressed confidence it has controls in place to protect the public, the workforce and the environment.
DOE could not immediately be reached on further comment. In April 2020, the CH2M-BWXT team was awarded a 39-month extension, keeping it in place at least through June 2023. The current cleanup contract has been in place since August 2011 and the business is now valued at $836 million, according to DOE.
Jacobs acquired CH2M in 2017.
