The 222-S Laboratory at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state was evacuated and two workers taken to a hospital on Thursday after a small fire.
A piece of analytical equipment caught fire shortly before noon, according to Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), which operates the lab where Wastren Advantage analyzes samples of radioactive waste stored at Hanford.
A worker doused the fire with a hand-held fire extinguisher. The Hanford Fire Department was called and confirmed the fire was out. Surveys showed the incident produced no radiological contamination, according to WRPS.
About 250 lab employees were evacuated during the incident, with all workers accounted for at 12:11 p.m. One employee was taken to the hospital in nearby Richland with symptoms of heat stress and later reported respiratory irritation. A second employee with respiratory symptoms also was taken to the Richland hospital. Both were released later that day and approved to return to work.
The temperature reached a high of 108 degrees at Hanford on Thursday, and workers were taken to air-conditioned office buildings to wait until the lab reopened at 3:15 p.m. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The 70,000-square-foot 222-S Laboratory in central Hanford conducts organic, inorganic, and radiochemistry analyses. The analyses focus on tank waste, including evaluating waste compatibility for tank-to-tank transfers, for corrosion rate and corrosion inhibition studies, and to prepare for 242-A Evaporator campaigns to reduce liquid waste in double-shell tanks.
In all, Hanford houses about 56 million gallons of waste in underground tanks, a byproduct of decades of plutonium production for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
