PHOENIX— Planning by the Department of Energy and its contractors allowed the Hanford Site in Washington state to withstand the impact of recent wind gusts in excess of 80 miles per hour, the boss of the landlord services provider said here Wednesday.
“The massive windstorm” a few weeks ago knocked out of service about 13 miles of high-voltage power lines and dozens of transformers, which partially disrupted Hanford operations for six days, said Robert Wilkinson, president of Leidos-led Hanford Mission Integration Solutions.
A few years earlier, Wilkinson estimated, the down time would have been more like 45 to 90 days. The head of the site’s landlord contractor spoke Wednesday during a panel discussion about how cleanup of the former plutonium production complex in eastern Washington state might allow clean energy producers to move into the complex in the future.
Repairs and deployment of backup equipment started promptly and that was not “happenstance,” Wilkinson said of the extreme weather that hit Hanford a couple of weeks before the Waste Management Symposia began here this week.
Hanford, the Office of Environmental Management’s biggest most expensive cleanup site, has been preparing for around-the-clock operations of its Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. The facility, which Bechtel National is building, will solidify liquid radioactive waste from the site’s underground tanks into a stable glass form.
The planning for 24/7 operations has tightened coordination between DOE, Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, Washington River Protection Solutions and Central Plateau Cleanup, among others, and came in handy when the entire site was confronted with extreme winds and below-freezing temperatures, Wilkinson said.
Hanford planners try to do a post-event on such events, to better “prepare for the next thing,” said Hanford Site Manager Brian Vance.
