Among the few details released publicly about the changes contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation will make to its strategy for tearing down the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site was tucked into a recent report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which says the company will now remove additional glove boxes before knocking the Cold War-era building down.
Completion of demolition to slab on grade — meaning all that will be left of the facility is the concrete slab on which it is built — was recently delayed a year to Sept. 30, 2017. The Washington state Department of Ecology made the announcement on July 14.
The state did not announce whether, or how, DOE and its contractor might alter their approach to the job, which has proved technically challenging and at times dangerous for workers at the former plutonium production site near Richland, Wash. However, a weekly sigte report dated July 1 and uploaded Thursday to website of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s offers a glimpse at the more thorough approach the contractor plans to take.
“The contractor modified their approach and will require removal of additional high hazard glove boxes from the upper levels of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility prior to demolition,” reads the report. “This action provides a more controlled approach and reduces material at risk during the demolition phase.”
A DOE spokesperson at Hanford, reached by email Monday, had no immediate comment about which glove boxes, and how many, would be taken out of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility prior to demolition.
The Plutonium Reclamation Facility is part of the Plutonium Finishing Plant: a building that prepared plutoium for use in U.S. nuclear weapons and that has been called the most dangerous demolition project in the entire DOE weapons complex.
