The Department of Energy is about 85% finished shoring up the three sagging underground waste structures around the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site, a Department of Energy spokesperson at the former plutonium production site said late last week.
“We have finished stabilizing the largest structure, the Z-9 crib, and the settling tank, Z-361,” the spokesperson said. Personnel now “are working on stabilizing the smallest of the three underground structures, the Z-2 Crib.”
The spokesperson declined to identify a likely completion date, but said most of the work is done. Early in December, Brian Vance Hanford’s DOE site manager, told the Hanford Advisory Board the work should wrap up in January. Weather slowed the agency’s progress somewhat, Vance said in December.
In April 2020, the Central Plateau contractor at the time, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation, issued a $3.9 million subcontract to White Shield, of Pasco, Wash., to design and apply engineered grout at three sites constructed between the 1940s and 1960s. All three received liquid waste during Hanford’s Cold War production days and were determined by DOE to be in at least some danger of collapse. One of the structures is made of wood, the others of concrete and steel.
The DOE took comment on the project early last year, saying that while the project was not an emergency, it was time sensitive. After a section of Tunnel 1 at the Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) Plant was found partly collapsed in May 2017, DOE started studying other aging Hanford facilities at risk of collapse.
