Tunnel Containing Nuke Waste Collapses At Hanford Site
Photo taken March 21, 2011, shows a decommissioned nuclear reactor during the cleanup operations at the Western hemisphere's most contaminated nuclear site in Hanford, Wash. Hundreds of workers at the nuclear site were ordered to take cover May 9, 2017, after a tunnel filled with contaminated material collapsed near the facility, federal officials said. (Photo: Mark Ralston, Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Author: Susannah Frame, KING-TV, Seattle
RICHLAND, Wash. — Hundreds of workers at Hanford Nuclear Reservation were evacuated Tuesday after part of a tunnel, which stores rail cars filled with radioactive waste, collapsed.
Officials detected no radiation release, and no workers were in the tunnel when it caved in, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology. Around 11 a.m. PT, a robot was being used to sample contamination in the air and on the ground.
Hanford contractors working nearby were removed from the area while those farther away on the the 586-square-mile site were told to remain indoors, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The complex, about half the size of Rhode Island, has more than 9,000 employees.
A manager sent a message to all personnel telling them to "secure ventilation in your building" and "refrain from eating or drinking."
The tunnel contains highly contaminated materials such as trains that transported nuclear fuel rods. It connects to a plutonium uranium extraction building, known at the site as PUREX.
The collapse occurred at one of two rail tunnels under the PUREX site, Bradbury said. In the past, rail cars full of radioactive waste were driven into the tunnels and buried.
The closed PUREX plant was part of the nation’s nuclear weapons production complex.
Hanford, near Richmond and about 200 miles southeast of Seattle, was built during World War II and made the plutonium for most of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. For decades afterward, workers made plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Today the site contains 56 million gallons of radioactive waste and is the largest depository of radioactive waste from the Defense Department. Contractors are in the midst of a decades-long process of cleanup.
Contributing: The Associated Press
