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Tag: central plateau cleanup company

Hanford pauses D&D prep work on REDOX facility

December 16, 2024, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions
Demolition work being conducted on Hanford’s REDOX facility in July 2024. (Photo: DOE)

Work to prepare Hanford’s Reduction Oxide Plant (REDOX) for decontamination and demolition has been put on hold as the Department of Energy shifts focus to higher-priority work at the nuclear site in Washington state.

Demolition work continues near former Hanford processing facility

September 20, 2024, 12:00PMRadwaste Solutions
Crews demolished a former chemical storage area at the Hanford Site’s Reduction Oxidation Plant. (Photos: DOE)

Workers with the Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company recently demolished a former chemical storage area at the Reduction Oxidation Plant, one of five former plutonium production facilities at the Hanford Site.

Hanford stabilizes final reactor fuel storage basin

August 23, 2024, 7:00AMRadwaste Solutions
This series of photos shows the grouting of the K West Reactor spent fuel storage basin. Workers removed nearly 1 million gallons of contaminated water before filling the 16-foot-deep basin with about 6,500 cubic yards of grout—enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools. (Images: DOE)

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state recently finished filling the last large concrete basin at the K Reactor Area with cement-like grout. The basin stored reactor fuel rods from historic plutonium production in the 1950s.

Former plutonium processing facility at Hanford coming down

August 28, 2023, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions
Work crews remove old infrastructure near the Hanford Site’s Cold War–era PUREX plant. (Photo: DOE)

Demolition is underway on several former chemical storage tanks and associated infrastructure near the Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) plant, the final and most advanced chemical separations facility at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of September.

Hanford's former PUREX plant is prepared for disposition

December 19, 2022, 7:00AMRadwaste Solutions
An aerial view of Hanford’s Plutonium Uranium Extraction plant, showing the main facility (at center), the 211-A chemical storage area, and (in foreground) the 203-A acid storage area. (Photo: DOE)

Work crews at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state are performing risk-reduction activities at the Plutonium Uranium Extraction (PUREX) plant to prepare it for eventual disposition.

“It will be a yearslong effort to get this large facility ready for disposition, and I’m encouraged by the progress to safely and efficiently advance this work,” said Andy Wiborg, the DOE’s Projects and Facilities Division team lead for Hanford’s Central Plateau cleanup project.

Hanford completes cleanup at Plutonium Finishing Plant

January 12, 2022, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions
Click to see full image. (Photo: DOE)

Department of Energy contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company recently completed final demolition activities at the Hanford Site’s former Plutonium Finishing Plant, which was once one of the most hazardous facilities in the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) cleanup complex.

Check out this time-lapse video of the plant’s demolition from October 2016 through November 2021.

Hanford subcontractor to support transfer of radioactive capsules to dry storage

February 17, 2021, 9:30AMRadwaste Solutions

A subcontractor has been selected to continue making modifications to a Hanford facility to transfer nearly 2,000 highly radioactive capsules to safer interim dry storage.

Central Plateau Cleanup Company, the Department of Energy’s prime cleanup contractor for the Central Plateau area of the Hanford Site, near Richland, Wash., recently awarded a $9.5 million construction subcontract to Apollo Mechanical Contractors. Apollo will continue work on the site’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility (WESF), where nearly 2,000 highly radioactive capsules containing cesium and strontium are stored underwater.

Apollo will modify the WESF and install equipment needed to transfer the radioactive capsules from a water-filled basin to safer interim dry storage. In the 1970s, to reduce the temperature of the waste inside Hanford’s waste tanks, cesium and strontium were removed from the tanks and moved to the WESF. The DOE expects that the transfer of the capsules to dry storage will be completed by 2025.

“While the 1,936 cesium and strontium capsules are currently in safe storage, WESF is an aging facility,” said Gary Pyles, project manager for the DOE’s Richland Operations Office. “Moving the capsules will enable the planned deactivation of WESF and will reduce the risk and significantly reduce the annual costs for storing the capsules.”