Equipment Tested For Hanford Cleanup

Sat., April 29, 2000

From Staff

Tests are under way on equipment for a project to remove 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel from leak-prone pools just 400 yards from the Columbia River on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Construction and assembly of the facilities and equipment needed for the K Basins project are nearly complete, and workers are now training and testing individual segments.

The project appears to be on track to meet a Nov. 30 deadline to move the first fuel out of one of the basins and into a nearby processing plant, said Phil Loscoe, the Department of Energy’s spent nuclear fuels director.

Tests on individual pieces of equipment have been under way for six months and are expected to be completed in August. Tests next month will determine whether an underwater “washing machine” can successfully knock debris and loose bits of sludge from fuel canisters, he said.

The containers will then be dried in a vacuum chamber and shipped to a dry storage building near the middle of the 560-square-mile federal reservation.

The K Basins are indoor pools at the site of two defunct reactors. Spent fuel rods have been stored there since the N Reactor shut down in the 1980s.

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