Hanford Site

Bechtel National workers have completed assembling the first melter at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment Plant, the Department of Energy announced Thursday. Completion of the project earned the contractor $4.275 million in incentive pay. The melter is one of two that will be used at the plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, which DOE aims to begin […]

The last of the 94 vertically buried pipes filled with radioactive waste have been removed from the Hanford Site’s 618-10 Burial Ground, and other cleanup work there is nearing completion, according to the Department of Energy and cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Former river corridor remediation contractor Washington Closure Hanford developed a plan […]

Eight workers reported smelling suspicious odors outside the A Tank Farm in the center of the Hanford Site in Washington state on Tuesday morning, a possible indication of chemical vapors associated with radioactive waste stored in underground tanks. One of the workers was an industrial hygienist who took immediate air samples. Evaluation of the samples […]

Plaintiffs and defendants in the lawsuit over chemical vapors protection for workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state have asked for another delay in the trial as they try to reach a settlement agreement. The trial already has been postponed twice to allow the parties to pursue mediation. Now, the sides have asked U.S. […]

Workers who were ordered to take cover June 8 at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant are being offered bioassay testing for radioactive contamination. “We have seen no preliminary data to suggest potential exposures exceed levels requiring a bioassay,” according to a memo distributed Friday to employees working on the plant cleanup. But rather than […]

The Donald Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget request for the Hanford Site’s Richland Operations Office is inadequate, regulators for the Department of Energy facility in Washington state said Wednesday during discussions at a Hanford Advisory Board meeting and a public budget meeting. The proposed $800 million for the office – which includes security and cybersecurity […]

WASHINGTON — In a mostly symbolic milestone that nevertheless carries measurable cost savings, the Energy Department could close out Washington Closure Hanford’s contract by the end of 2017, a senior DOE official said here Wednesday. “I think we may be at the end of this year able to say we have everything done to close […]

Workers at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant were ordered to take cover indoors for more than three hours Thursday morning as a precaution after an air monitor detected low levels of airborne contamination, according to the Department of Energy. A survey subsequently found spots of radioactive contamination had spread outside the demolition zone established […]

Hanford’s annual cleanup budget priority meeting will be held Wednesday June 7 at the Richland Public Library. To register to watch via webinar go to June 7th on the Hanford event calendar. Public comment on fiscal 2019 needs will be accepted at HanfordPriorities2019@rl.gov from June 7 to July 7. The meeting traditionally covers the next two […]

The Department of Energy is making plans to fill the partially collapsed waste tunnel at the Hanford PUREX plant with grout, the agency said in a Wednesday meeting with state regulators and site contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation Company. Personnel at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., discovered a 20-foot-long breach in the Purex tunnel May […]

Bechtel National earned just over $7 million in fees for its work building the Waste Treatment Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland Wash.: good for 71 percent of the total available for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2016. DOE grades Bechtel in two major categories: the less-quantifiable project management category, which […]

Bechtel National earned just over $7 million in fees for its work building the Waste Treatment Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland Wash.: good for 71 percent of the total available for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2016. DOE grades Bechtel in two major categories: the less-quantifiable project management category, which […]

The Department of Energy’s latest budget request would reduce spending at the Hanford Site in Washington state by $118.8 from current levels. The total budget would be $2.22 billion for fiscal 2018, not including security costs. The proposal would add about $5 million to the budget of Hanford’s Office of River Protection, for a total […]

Radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s double-shell Tank AZ-101 does not appear to be from a leak within the tank, the Department of Energy said Wednesday. A leak was considered possible when a robotic crawler pulled out of the annulus, or space between the tank’s two shells, on May 18 was found to be contaminated […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to review monitoring and maintenance of aging facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state after the May 9 discovery of a breached waste tunnel. “Fortunately, the collapse did not result in any injuries and no measureable release of […]

The Department of Energy has rated the fiscal 2016 performance of Hanford Site support services provider Mission Support Alliance (MSA) as “very good.” The contractor earned 91 percent of the available fee, or a little more than $19.2 million. The fee included 94 percent of the maximum available for meeting milestones, or nearly $13 million, […]

The $88 million top-line increase the Donald Trump administration proposed Tuesday for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management in fiscal 2018 is two-and-a-half times less than the office would spend next year to start decontaminating disused nuclear-weapon facilities now owned by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The administration’s new budget plan, if […]

Radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s double-shell Tank AZ-101 does not appear to be from a leak within the tank, the Department of Energy said Wednesday. A leak was considered possible when a robotic crawler pulled out of the annulus, or space between the shells of the tank, on May 18 was found to be […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to review monitoring and maintenance of aging facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state after the May 9 discovery of a breached waste tunnel. “Fortunately, the collapse did not result in any injuries and no measureable release of […]

Members of Washington state’s congressional delegation used two recent emergencies at the Hanford Site to make the case for strong funding for the Department of Energy facility in a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. “It is clear aging infrastructure and the waste contained within it continues to present a threat to the health and […]

A heavy plastic cover was installed Saturday over the partially collapsed PUREX plant waste tunnel at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state. Work is expected to continue through Monday to secure the cover’s sides with 150 concrete ecology blocks and to crisscross cable lacings from the blocks across the top of the soil […]

Radioactive contamination discovered Thursday night could be a sign that a second double-shell tank at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state is leaking waste into the space between its shells. A robotic crawler had been inserted down a riser into the space between the shells, or the annulus, of Tank AZ-101 as […]

Hanford Site officials were hoping for little or no wind Friday to they can lay a plastic covering over the entire length of the PUREX plant underground waste tunnel where a breach was discovered on May 9. Weather permitting, workers will stage a heavy piece of industrial plastic beside the soil berm that tops the […]

It will take until 2031 to empty and seal 16 underground waste tanks at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. — 12 years later than the end-date DOE and Washington state set in 2010, the federal agency said late Monday in a regulatory filing. The 16 single-shell tanks to be emptied and closed are in Hanford’s […]

All employees of central Hanford were back at work Monday after an emergency was declared May 9 following the partial collapse of an underground tunnel storing radioactively contaminated equipment near the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant. All but a couple hundred employees had returned to work last Thursday at the Department of Energy facility in Washington […]

The Energy Department on Monday submitted its plans for closing four single-shell liquid-waste tanks at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., the Washington state Department of Ecology confirmed. DOE was once supposed to deliver the closure schedule by March 30, but the state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the two main regulators […]

The Department of Energy plans to lay a flexible, durable plastic cover over the berm topping a long-term radioactive waste storage tunnel, where a partial roof collapse was discovered last Tuesday. The work will be done this week, weather permitting, and should take only a couple days, Doug Shoop, manager of DOE’s Richland Operations Office […]

Most of the Hanford Site workers facing layoff this month have been placed in other positions. CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. (CHPRC), one of the cleanup primes for the Department of Energy site in Washington state, announced in March it planned to cut up to 250 jobs in three rounds of layoffs in early May, […]

The emergency declared Tuesday at the Hanford Site in Washington state when a breach was discovered in one of the underground waste storage tunnels for the Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) Plant was formally ended after workers finished filling in the hole late Wednesday night. “(The work) was accomplished swiftly and safely to prevent any further […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board will meet on June 21 to discuss the Energy Department’s research into the staying power of the borosilicate glass the agency wants to use to immobilize high-level liquid waste at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The meeting will be held at the Courtyard Richland Columbia Point hotel in […]