Washington Closure hits 6 million hours of safe work

Washington Closure Hanford and its subcontractor employees have reached 6 million hours worked without a lost workday because of an injury for the second time since the contractor began work at Hanford in 2005.

“To achieve 6 million safe working hours in the hazardous environments in which they work is remarkable in our cleanup industry and is a tribute to our highly skilled workers,” Scott Sax, Washington Closure president, said in a statement.

During the current three-year streak, Washington Closure completed several complex cleanup projects. It removed an underground test reactor and a concrete vault used to to store highly contaminated liquid. Each weighed about 2.2 million pounds.

In addition, team members isolated unexploded ordinances from a former firing range, excavated chromium-contaminated soil down to 85 feet deep and hauled more than 3 million tons of contaminated material to a central Hanford landfill that Washington Closure operates.

This story was originally published October 2, 2015 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Washington Closure hits 6 million hours of safe work."