Hanford removing tainted water
YAKIMA – Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation have begun removing water from the K East basin, a leak-prone pool of water built to hold spent nuclear fuel.
The K East basin is one of two basins at the site that were built in the 1950s to hold about 2,300 tons of highly radioactive fuel rods from the N Reactor. The reactor was used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
The indoor, water-filled pools had a planned use of 20 years. The K East basin has leaked water and sludge into the soil, threatening the Columbia River just 400 yards away.
Crews removed the last canister of spent fuel from the basin in July. What remains is sludge from the corroded spent nuclear fuel, along with dust, dirt and sloughed material from the basin walls. Work on removing sludge began in June.
Crews plan to remove water as cement is gradually poured into the basins. In early August, they began removing contaminated water from the pool as cement was poured into an area of the pool known as the discharge chute.
Fuel was moved from the reactor through the chute to the basin for underwater storage. The area where the chute connected to the reactor also is where several million gallons of contaminated water leaked in the 1970s and the 1990s.
About 500 cubic yards of cement had been poured into the chute as of Friday, and about 105,000 gallons of water had been removed. The water was to be transported by truck to another facility on the Hanford site for treatment, the Energy Department said in a news release.
“This is another example of early risk reduction at Hanford,” said Matt McCormick, assistant manager of Hanford’s Central Plateau for the Energy Department’s Richland Operations Office.
“With the fuel out of K East, we’re going after both the sludge and the water to close the basin altogether — an important step for this project and Hanford cleanup,” he said.
Eventually, plans call for cutting the cement-filled basins into sections for long-term disposal and removing the contaminated soil.
All fuel, debris and water will be taken out of the K East basin, and the basin itself will be removed by March 31, 2007. The K West basin will be removed by spring 2009.