A former Hanford Site building, now within the city limits of Richland, Wash., is being torn down under an $11.4 million contract held by CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. The contract is separate from CH2M’s cleanup contract at Hanford for work such as excavating contaminated waste sites and tearing down contaminated buildings.
The Richland building, the Research Technology Laboratory, has office space and laboratories, which have some limited radioactive contamination. Demolition debris will be taken to the central Hanford landfill, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, which is operated by CH2M.
The research laboratory was constructed in 1966 by Douglas Laboratories as part of the Atomic Energy Commission’s economic diversification initiative for communities near Hanford. It later was transferred to Exxon Nuclear Co. and then purchased in 1981 by Battelle, the Department of Energy contractor for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), for use by the lab. The building is at the southern end of the national lab’s Richland campus in what was once the Hanford 1100 Area.
The laboratory used the building until the last of workers were relocated to more modern facilities on the PNNL campus a year ago. Modernizing the building would be too expensive, Battelle concluded.
CH2M removed hazardous materials from nine nearby support buildings and demolished them in late 2017. Demolition began this week on the main building – which is almost 56,000 square feet in size, including a 7,000-square-foot basement. Demolition is starting on the office end of the building made primarily of reinforced concrete.
Work this month will include removing spots of radioactive contamination, mostly uranium in picocurie quantities, from the concrete floors of five labs. Each lab will be sealed off and an exhauster used to create negative air pressure. A thin layer of concrete will then be removed with a scabbler that features an internal vacuum system to prevent any contamination from becoming airborne in the rooms.
Open-air demolition of the laboratory areas of the building will be done with two excavators equipped with shears, a bucket and thumb, and a hammer to break up heavy concrete, including the building’s footings. A subcontractor has removed friable asbestos from the building, but a small amount of nonfriable asbestos remains, including in some gaskets. To control any asbestos, water with a surfactant will be sprayed during demolition. Soil cement will be applied to the ground at the end of each day’s demolition activities.
PNNL and CH2M have been in frequent contact with nearby residents and business operators to provide information and answer questions. The demolition is near a new apartment complex and offices and only a few blocks from Washington State University Tri-Cities. “PNNL is monitoring activity at the site daily,” said lab spokesman Greg Koller.
Demolition is expected to be completed in the spring.