The Department of Energy’s plans to kick off a public comment period next month on options for removing seven aging structures within the 200 West Area of the Hanford Site in Washington state.
In a Monday announcement, DOE said these are “Tier 2” structures, meaning the facilities are chemically or radiologically contaminated due to Hanford’s past plutonium mission and require a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act response due to the potential for hazardous releases.
All the structures were built between the 1940s and the 1980s and are contaminated to various degrees, DOE said, adding that removal would both reduce environmental risks and lower overall Hanford surveillance and maintenance costs.
The DOE will hold a 30-day public comment period on an engineering evaluation and cost analysis for three alternatives for what the agency describes as “non-time-critical” demolition.
The 231-Z Materials Engineering Laboratory, located within the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) complex, would be the first targeted for decontamination and demolition to allow crews to continue key risk-reduction work on the Central Plateau, DOE said. The 231-Z Materials building is a 1940s vintage facility, once known as the Isolation Building, and was used for the final step for processing plutonium.
The outgoing cleanup contractor on Hanford’s central plateau, the Jacobs-owned CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company, finished tearing down PFP’s main processing facility in 2020.
Others structures in the group are the 213-W Waste Compactor Building, the 242-S Evaporator Facility, 242-T Waste Disposal Evaporator Building, the 242-TB Vent House, the 292-S Jet Pit House and the 292-T Fission Products Release Laboratory.
The agency expects to issue a fact sheet and other information closer to the start of the public comment period in March. In the meantime, questions can be emailed to Jennifer Colborn at [email protected].
