SPOKANE — Work to demolish a former nuclear weapons production factory in Washington may resume in September, about six months after it was halted when workers were exposed to radioactive particles, the U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday.
The agency will implement extra safety measures for workers demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which is near Richland. The plant was involved in producing much of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Hanford officials issued a report in late March that said a total of 42 Hanford workers inhaled or ingested radioactive particles when they were exposed during contamination events in June and December of last year. Radioactive contamination was also found outside plant offices and inside two dozen vehicles, the report said.
Demolition work was halted. Experts studied the dangerous work, looking for ways to make it safer for employees and the environment.
“Right now we are planning for a September resumption on demolition,” said Karen Wiemelt, a manager at CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company, the private contractor performing the work for the Energy Department. She predicted demolition could be completed by next June.
Experts have identified techniques to make the work safer, including better and more frequent monitoring for radioactive contamination, better ventilation, minimizing waste piles and making sure that materials known as fixatives were used according to manufacturers’ specifications, Wiemelt said.
Erecting a big containment tent over the plant site was rejected as too complicated and not worth the effort, she said.
“It would take us literally a couple of years to design and procure and build a tent,” she said. “It makes far more sense to proceed very deliberately with enhanced controls.”
Hanford is the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production complex, and the complicated cleanup costs the federal treasury around $2 billion a year. The cleanup is expected to last decades and involves buildings, 177 underground nuclear waste storage tanks and other facilities on a site half the size of Rhode Island.
The March report concluded that Hanford officials placed too much reliance on air-monitoring systems that failed to pick up the spread of radioactive particles. Managers of the private contractor were also caught between maintaining safety and trying to make progress toward project deadlines, according to the report.
Risk escalated as walls of the plutonium plant were knocked down and the rubble was stored in piles.
