I have often blogged about the one hundred and fifty acre Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south central Washington State. After decades of nuclear weapons development which ended around 1990 with the end of the Cold War, the Hanford site is one of the most radioactively polluted areas on Earth. The U.S. government has been slow to clean up the millions of tons and hundreds of billions of gallons of nuclear waste at the site and the State of Washington has repeatedly pulled the Department of Energy into court over problems at Hanford. One big point of contention recently has been the accidental exposure of workers to radioactive materials and the question of how serious that exposure has been to their health. Once again, the Hanford site has experienced a serious accident that may have threatened workers there.
There are hundreds of feet of railroad tunnels underground at Hanford that are covered by about eight feet of soil. These tunnels were used by rail cars which brought spent nuclear fuel from reactors to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility (PUREX) in the 200 East area of Hanford where uranium and plutonium were extracted to make nuclear warheads. The underground tunnels converge at the PUREX. Currently the tunnels are being used to store rail cars and other pieces of equipment which are radioactively contaminated from their use during weapons manufacture.
This morning, it was reported that a twenty foot by twenty foot section of soil had caved in above the junction of two of the underground tunnels next to the PUREX. The collapse of the soil over the tunnel junction prompted the Department of Energy to declare an emergency at the site. “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Richland Operations Office activated the Hanford Emergency Operations Center at 8:26 a.m,” the Department of Energy said in a statement. “There are concerns about subsidence in the soil covering railroad tunnels near a former chemical processing facility. The tunnels contain contaminated materials.”
Authorities say that there has been no release of radioactive materials and no workers have been exposed to such materials. Hanford workers at the site have been evacuated and workers at nearby facilities have been told to stay inside their building for the time being. The workers were advised by a manager to “secure ventilation in your building” and to “refrain from eating or drinking.” Access to the whole 200 East area of Hanford has been restricted.
The Hanford Fire Department is currently on the scene. The responders have reported that what they found when they reached the PUREX was that a four foot by four foot section of soil had subsided over one of the railroad tunnels. The soil appears to have subsided between two and four feet. This particular tunnel is about three hundred and fifty feet long, nineteen feet wide, and twenty two feet high. The walls and ceiling of the tunnel are fourteen inches thick and consist of pressure treated Douglas fir timbers. An anonymous source has been quoted as saying that workers near the PUREX may have created vibrations that caused the soil above the tunnel to collapse through the ceiling into the tunnel.
Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility at Hanford:
