CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company: Hanford Cleanup: Proud of our Progress

This will be a year of prideful transition for CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Co. (CHPRC). As our contract ends, I invite readers, stakeholders and all Hanford employees past and present to share our pride in the incredible cleanup progress we made during the past 11-plus years on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The Hanford Site was created in a time of great need for our nation to accomplish a technical challenge the world had never seen. Just as the generations that worked here before us, we continue accomplishing technical challenges that deliver significant cleanup progress. Pride and engagement in our cleanup mission by the people getting it done every day is the One Hanford initiative.

Since this contract began in 2008, we removed highly radioactive sludge away from the Columbia River and treated more than 20 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater by building state-of-the-art treatment facilities. We demolished hundreds of buildings, including buildings at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, and we are doing some of the final work to finish that critical risk-reduction project. We removed hundreds of waste sites, retrieved waste from burial grounds, and treated and disposed of thousands of cubic meters of waste. We recovered spent nuclear fuel and placed it safely into storage.

We truly changed the landscape and the site, for the better. During our time at Hanford, it has been a privilege to protect the Columbia River, shrink the area of active cleanup and reduce risk on behalf of the workers, the public and the beautiful Columbia Basin region.

CHPRC’s progress sets a stage for continued risk reduction well into the future. Our progress today allows future workers to remove highly radioactive soil from beneath the 324 Building, place the last reactor along the Columbia River into interim safe storage and bring the canyon facilities even closer to demolition. We are also preparing the facility that will provide permanent, environmentally safe disposal of containers of vitrified tank waste from the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant as part of the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) program.

Our work off-Site is as just as important, and this investment will continue to pay dividends in the coming years. Through CHPRC’s Highway to Hanford initiative, we promoted opportunities to bring the next generation of workers to Hanford and enhance a quality of life and diversity in our community. We partnered with educational institutions, labor and the Washington State STEM Education Foundation to prepare students for careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Today’s students will advance Hanford cleanup tomorrow.

This progress would not have been possible without our tremendous workforce. I hope they are as proud of their work as I am, as they continue solving complex environmental cleanup challenges by their commitment to safety and ethical work practices. The challenge is what makes this work fun and rewarding – if it were easy, we wouldn’t want to do it.

So, thank you, workers, and thank you, DOE, our elected leaders and the community for entrusting us to advance progress at Hanford. It’s a place with a rich, complicated, challenging and successful history, and I’m proud to have led the CHPRC team that made significant contributions to the site’s cleanup success. I look forward to seeing what this workforce will accomplish, under a new contractor, into the future. I know it will be incredible.

This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 5:01 PM with the headline "CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company: Hanford Cleanup: Proud of our Progress."