The Energy Department and contractor CH2M Plateau Remediation have finished taking down the main processing facility at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant.
With the building’s demolition, full removal of the Plutonium Finishing Plant should be finished this summer by the Jacobs subsidiary. Remaining work involves packaging and disposal of the rubble from the Plutonium Reclamation Facility, which was torn down in 2017. That is expected to begin next week.
In addition, soil samples will be taken from under the building pads to check contamination levels, DOE said in a press release Wednesday.
The main processing facility at PFP was also known as the Z-Plant because between 1949 and 1989 it marked the last phase of plutonium production at Hanford. Workers used glove boxes to form plutonium “buttons” that were then sent to plants that made nuclear weapons, the release says. The PFP complex made about two-thirds of domestic plutonium during the Cold War.
The protracted planning, cleanout, and demolition at the PFP lasted about 20 years, with the four main buildings taken down since 2016. Along with the main processing facility, the Plutonium Reclamation Facility, the fan house/ventilation stack, and the Americium Recovery Facility have all now been demolished.
The Energy Department said it does not yet have a cost total for the demolition.
The lower-risk work at PFP, which included loading debris from structures previously torn down, was completed on Oct. 30.
Demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant was suspended in December 2017 after an airborne spread of radioactive contamination before. Altogether, 42 Hanford workers ingested or inhaled small amounts of radioactive material two separate incidents. Work resumed in April 2019.
Post-demolition surveys, along with a monitoring program, will be set up to watch for contamination around the site, Hanford Deputy Manager for the Richland Operations Office Joe Franco told a meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board on Wednesday.
