100 Hanford workers moving to new offices after radiation confusion

One hundred workers are being moved out of the trailer village of offices at the Hanford nuclear reservation’s Plutonium Finishing Plant.

As careful surveying for radioactive contamination is continuing after a spread of radioactive particles was discovered in December, the “overwhelming presence of naturally occurring radon” in the trailer village offices is causing a problem, workers were told in a memo.

Any detection of radiation is treated as if it is a potential spread of radioactive particles from the open-air demolition of the plant until further analysis determines whether it is naturally occurring radon or a spread of contamination.

Radon, which is radioactive, is present in almost all rock, soil and water on the Earth’s surface.

The spread of contamination was found after workers finished demolishing most of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility in mid-December.

The demolition is suspected by Hanford officials as being the source of the airborne spread.

The control zone around the demolition project was broadly expanded on Jan. 7 to tightly regulate access to a wide area around the plant, including closing some roads. Some contamination spread from the plant across a road used by Hanford workers.

This week five more government or government contractor vehicles had possible contamination detected. They are in addition to 16 government and contractor vehicles previously detected with contamination and seven personal vehicles with exterior contamination.

However, the checks of vehicles include some that were used in radiological control areas, zones set up where it was known that radioactive material was likely to be present.

As of Wednesday, 271 workers had requested checks for possible inhalation or ingestion of radioactive particles from the contamination spread. Workers should receive their results in the next few weeks, according to Hanford officials.

The Plutonium Finishing Plant workers were being told to park at the 200 West Pump and Treat a mile away, and were being shuttled to the plant.

Now they temporarily will work out of offices at other Hanford projects and be shuttled to the plant as needed for work assignments.

Plant workers on Wednesday issued a stop-work order on the office moves, concerned that the moves would be made gradually rather than immediately. They lifted the order when plant management came up with a plan to make the office moves on Wednesday and Thursday.

Any Hanford worker may call a halt to work if it appears to create a safety issue.

Workers on other CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. projects are being moved around to consolidate office space and make room for about 100 Plutonium Finishing Plant workers. Some vacant office trailers also are being refurbished.

The scattered offices are a temporary solution, with plans being made to set up a new trailer village for the plant workers.

Saturday work is planned to pile soil around the stub of two walls still standing at the Plutonium Reclamation Facility.

Although the legal cleanup requirement is to have all parts of the plant torn down to its foundation, two sections of walls six and eight feet tall remain standing at the reclamation facility because of demolition rubble piled up around them.

The facility once stood six stories high, including what workers called its “penthouse.”

Fixative to contain any radioactive particles that could become airborne has repeatedly been applied to the wall stubs, but soil should provide longer-lasting, but still temporary, containment.

Work to survey vehicles that may have been contaminated in the spread continues.

This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 3:51 PM with the headline "100 Hanford workers moving to new offices after radiation confusion."