One of the primary cleanup contractors at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has finished its assessment of the June spread of contamination during demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
The evaluation by CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation identified a need to augment the “work package hazard control set” and to improve measures for applying water and fixatives to mitigate the spread of radioactive materials, says a July 21 site report, made public this week, from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. “The evaluation also identified several contributing causes and proposes a set of corrective actions to address both the apparent and contributing causes.”
Additional details of the findings were not immediately available.
The contractor is managing teardown of the Hanford plant once used to mold plutonium into form for use in nuclear weapons. On the morning of June 8, workers were directed to remain indoors for over three hours after an air monitor identified low levels of airborne contamination.
Contamination was found to have spread outside the facility’s demolition zone, including on sidewalks, a station used for picking up respirators, and close to a vehicle access gate, according to reporting from the time. The incident caused no injuries or skin or internal contamination, a CH2M spokesman said.
Demolition to that point had exposed glove boxes in the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility during open-air demolition.