Demolition preparations have resumed at the X-333 Process Building at the Department of Energy’s shuttered Portsmouth Site in Ohio after a piece of old uranium-enrichment equipment caught fire there last week, an agency spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
The fire ignited at about 10:30 p.m. on March 14, after personnel with site cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth cut open the converter portion of one stage of X-333’s deactivated uranium enrichment cascade.
The converter, with its uranium-coated interior, experienced “a small exothermic reaction” in X-333’s material sizing area, a DOE spokesperson wrote in a statement emailed Wednesday to Weapons Complex Monitor. The reaction “was anticipated as part of the planning process of this work,” the spokesperson said.
Despite the anticipation, no site fire services personnel were on hand when the reaction occurred. Firefighters “responded immediately upon being called,” but did not actually put out the smoky fire, the spokesperson said. Instead, fire services “allowed the reaction to self extinguish.”
Someone familiar with the incident described the fire to Weapons Complex Monitor.
The spokesperson said there were no injuries, but did not reply to requests for comment about whether radioactive contamination had spread beyond X-333. However, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth has since March 14 “collected multiple rounds of air and surface samples to ensure the work area is safe,” according to the statement.
Fluor-BWXT has until June 30, 2020, to finish cutting up the converters — a task formally called segmentation — in order to earn all of the fees associated with the work. The company could earn 70 percent of that fee if it finishes segmentation by Aug. 30, 2020. X-333 is supposed to be “cold and dark and ready for demo” by March 25, 2021, according to Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth’s contract.
X-333 would not be torn down under Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth current contract: a 10-year deal awarded in 2011 and now worth more than $3.5 billion. Demolition is slated to start in 2023 and wrap up in 2027. DOE’s Environmental Management office issued a request for information for a follow-on Portsmouth prime contract in November. The incumbent is slated to be on the job through late March 2021.
Completed in 1955, the two-floor X-333 Process Building produced very highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons early in the Cold War, later shifting to lower-enriched uranium used to fuel reactors that powered naval warships.
X-333, and the rest of Portsmouth, ceased enriching uranium altogether in 2001, by which point the site was producing mostly low-enriched uranium for commercial nuclear power plants.
