A Department of Energy contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state has finished taking down a 6,000-square-foot water treatment structure near the Columbia River that supported remediation work at the property.
Crews from Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup carried out the work, DOE said in a Tuesday release.
The facility provided water for firefighting and dust suppression while extracting the radioactive sludge and cocooning, or building a protective structure, around the K West Reactor’s spent fuel basin, according to DOE.
Other resources for fire and dust suppression are available for future remediation work, DOE said. Before tearing down the facility, DOE and its contractor unplugged the building’s electrical and mechanical systems and drained about 365,000 gallons of water from a nearby tank, according to the release.
K West is one of the multiple reactors built between the 1940s and the 1960s at Hanford to support plutonium production for national defense.
