A tunnel full of radioactive waste may have collapsed at one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the US
The Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, one of the largest storehouses of radioactive waste in the US, is currently undergoing an emergency.
Hanford, which is overseen by the US Department of Energy (DOE), is a Cold War-era facility that led production of plutonium for use in tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. While no longer in use, it’s undergoing a lengthy process of decommissioning.
On Tuesday morning, the site posted an emergency bulletin on Tuesday that called on employees to evacuate and take shelter near “a former chemical processing facility”.
The bulletin said the alert was triggered due to “concerns about subsidence [caving] in the soil covering railroad tunnels near a former chemical processing facility. The tunnels contain contaminated materials.”
The bulletin later noted that “the soil has subsided in an area approximately 20 feet by 20 feet over one of the tunnels next to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, also known as PUREX. There is no indication of a release of contamination at this point. Responders are getting closer to the area where the soil has subsided for further visual inspection. The subsidence of soil was discovered during a routine surveillance of the area by workers. The tunnels are hundreds of feet long, with approximately eight feet of soil covering them. The depth of the subsidence of soil appears to be into the tunnel.“
The facility in question is the 200-acre plutonium uranium extraction plant, or PUREX.
Susannah Frame, a reporter with KING television in Seattle, posted on Twitter that the tunnel is “full of highly contaminated materials, such as hot, radioactive trains that transported fuel rods”.
Lynne T., a member of the joint information center with the DOE (who would not provide her last name), said the “situation is evolving”and could not confirm whether the railroad tunnel — which she said hasn’t been operated in about 20 years — had collapsed or not.
While “the tunnels do contain contaminated materials,” she told Business Insider, “there’s no evidence of any injuries, and all employees have been accounted for. There’s also no confirmation that any radioactive material has been released.”
She added that someone noticed “a small sunken area of soil that is on top of a tunnel” that leads to the PUREX facility, triggering the facility to put out an emergency alert and carry out a response plan.
“The Hanford Fire Department is on the scene and investigating it, and everyone is being sheltered,” she said.
The Hanford emergency hotline representative also said that no one appears to be hurt at this time, and that approximately fewer than 10 people are currently in the PUREX facility.
According to the Hanford site:
“PUREX is slated to be decontaminated, demolished, and some of its debris removed. The rail cars buried next to the facility will also be decontaminated, removed, and permanently buried. Although, the option of grouting the rail cars in-place within the tunnel is being evaluated since removal of the cars would entail extreme worker safety hazards and would be more costly than grouting in-place.”
This story is developing.
Read more stories on Business Insider, Malaysian edition of the world’s fastest-growing business and technology news website.
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