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Workers pump infected water from the K West reactor’s 1. 2 million gallon pond and send it via tanker truck to a nearby treatment facility. Completion of this allocation will improve groundwater and Columbia River coverage as cleanup efforts progress in Hanford.
“Removing infected water from this watershed is a key step in our project to lessen the threat,” said Andy Wiborg, EM’s acting deputy director of river and shelf cleanup. “This effort will eliminate the threat of infected water seeping into groundwater approximately 400 meters from the Colombia River basin. “
The K West reactor and the nearby K East reactor were built in the 1950s and operated until the early 1970s to irradiate uranium fuel rods for chemical processing to produce plutonium. The basins of both reactors also stored spent fuel from Hanford’s last operating nuclear reactor. Reactor N.
The Hanford team will drain the pond and stabilize it with grout for long-term demolition. Teamwork among Hanford contractors is key to the good fortune of the project.
Contractor EM Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPCCo) is leading the charge and to date has filled more than 60 tankers containing approximately 8,000 gallons each. Contractor Hanford Mission Integration Solutions takes them to an on-site processing facility. Washington River Protections Solutions will treat wastewater from the Hanford Effluent Treatment Facility to remove contaminants and dispose of it in covered engineered ditches.
The K West reactor basin is 125 feet long and 65 feet wide and was filled with 16 feet of water. The water cooled the uranium fuel ejected from the reactor core and protected personnel from radiation while they stood on grates to move the fuel to containers in the garage.
To prepare the pond for drainage, cleaners were placed on the same grates and used long-handled machinery to move radioactive apparatus and waste into underwater tanks and metal pipes. The waste included boats containing used fuel, boat racks, pumps, hoses, hand devices. machinery, structural materials, and parts of a water treatment system.
“Group paintings to characterize, classify and organize the debris in the basin allowed us to begin shutting off water and preparing to inject the basin,” said Mike Kruzic of CPCCo, which is managing decommissioning plans at the reactor area. “It’s also wonderful to see the paintings teamed up between three Hanford marketers committed to moving this damage repair effort forward. “
In addition to the K East and K West reactors, the Hanford site also hosts approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks, representing one of the DOE’s greatest environmental risks and most complex and demanding situations. The tank waste is the result of nearly five decades of plutonium production in World War II.
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