Hanford exhaust stack demolished

Quotable: About the demolition, Hanford Site manager Ray Geimer said, “Safely removing this structure is an important step in clearing the area around the K reactor for the next phase of demolition where heavy equipment will access and demolish the old K West fuel storage basin that is connected to the K West reactor building. In doing so, we are clearing the path for the final stages of decommissioning the K West reactor, which supports an overarching strategy to expedite decommissioning, reduce long-term surveillance and maintenance requirements, and eliminate threats to the environment.”

Brief history: K West is one of two plutonium production reactors that was built in the mid-1950s at Hanford’s 100 K Area—the other is K East. Each reactor had a dedicated storage basin where irradiated fuel discharged by the reactors was temporarily stored before being transported to fuel processing facilities elsewhere at Hanford. According to an article published in the March 2009 issue of Nuclear News, these basins were 125 feet long and 20 feet deep.

While both reactors were shut down in the early 1970s, their fuel basins were modified and reused for temporary storage of fuel from the N reactor before it was transported to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant. When that plant closed, 2,300 tons of fuel were left in these 1.2-million-gallon basins. That fuel was fully removed by 2004, and the remaining radioactive sludge (a byproduct of fuel corrosion) was removed by 2007.