Hanford Nuclear Site, the decommissioned plant that has a reactor power facility and weapons production factory, had a finishing plant tunnel collapse that forced a sheltering-in-place warning to be issued. Apparently workers nearby had triggered subsidence in the soil covering the railroad tunnels.
Officials detected no release of radiation and no workers were injured, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology.
The tunnel reportedly contained highly contaminated materials including nuclear waste trains that are used to transport radioactive fuel rods.
A source said that crews doing road work nearby may have created enough vibration to cause the collapse.
A manager sent a message to all personnel telling them to "secure ventilation in your building" and "refrain from eating or drinking."
A source also said that Vit Plant employees are in cover mode as well.
The AP reports "there are concerns about subsidence in the soil covering railroad tunnels."
The building has been vacant for nearly twenty years, but it remains highly contaminated. Its walls are surrounded by razor wire and barbed wire fences. Several rail cars used to transport the irradiated fuel rods from the Hanford nuclear reactors to the processing canyons are temporarily buried inside a tunnel near PUREX as a result of becoming contaminated.
As with the rest of the Hanford structures, PUREX is slated to be decontaminated, demolished, and some of its debris removed. The rail cars buried next to the facility will also be decontaminated, removed, and permanently buried. Although, the option of grouting the rail cars in-place within the tunnel is being evaluated since removal of the cars would entail extreme worker safety hazards and would be more costly than grouting in-place.
The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, and decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste[4] stored within 177 storage tanks, an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, and 200 square miles (520 km2) of contaminated groundwater beneath the site.
In 2007, the Hanford site represented two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[8] Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[9][10] and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.[2] Besides the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, and various centers for scientific research and development, such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the LIGO Hanford Observatory.
On November 10, 2015, it was designated as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park alongside other sites in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos.[11]
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