Hanford Selling Off Unused Facility

It may be the largest white elephant ever built on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

But Hanford officials trying to find buyers for the never-used Fuels and Materials Examination Facility think it is too valuable to be torn down.

The seven-story building was built in the late 1970s at a cost of $200 million. The 240,000-square-foot building was supposed to serve as a support center for an adjacent experimental “breeder” reactor.

It contains “hot cells” for processing irradiated nuclear fuel and facilities for examining fuel rods without destroying them.

The newly constructed FMEF was left without a mission when the nation’s breeder program was scrapped in the 1980s.

The Department of Energy has put the building on the market and is advertising for companies to buy or lease it.

Already, there has been a wide range of interest, said Mike Minette of Westinghouse Hanford Co., the nuclear reservation’s prime contractor.

“We’re looking for light industrial or heavy industrial uses,” he said.

“But inquiries have also come to us from industries we never examined,” including someone looking for a permanent facility for a sound stage.

That’s not as farfetched as it may sound: a reactor building in South Carolina is being used as a movie studio.

“I’m not sure who the final user will be, but it looks like we have a wide variety of choices,” he added.

The sale price will depend on the intended use, and the proceeds will go toward cleaning up the contaminated Hanford site.