 EM contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company recently resumed final cleanup activities within the former Plutonium Finishing Plant footprint on the Hanford Site following the historic demolition of the plant’s iconic main processing facility in early 2020.
RICHLAND, Wash. – EM Richland Operations Office (RL) and contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPCCo) recently resumed final cleanup activities within the former Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) footprint at the Hanford Site following the historic demolition of PFP’s main processing facility early last year.
Crews at the PFP site will remove, package, and safely dispose of the rubble from demolition of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Then, they’ll take soil samples from beneath the PFP building pads and stabilize the site grounds with a protective cover that will limit the effects of water, wind, and heat.
“This critical risk-reduction work builds on the incredible accomplishment of completing demolition of the PFP main processing facility in early 2020,” said Tom Teynor, federal project director for PFP demolition at RL. “The progress toward safe completion of final activities at PFP continues to be a collaborative effort between the Department, our contractor, labor organizations, and regulators.”
 A worker with EM contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company surveys a loaded waste container at the site of the former Plutonium Finishing Plant to ensure it is safe for transfer to Hanford’s on-site disposal facility.
Rubble removal and packaging was about 25% complete when the work was halted and the site was placed in a safe configuration in March 2020, when Hanford entered an essential mission-critical operations posture in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The packaged rubble will be permanently disposed at the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, Hanford’s on-site engineered landfill.
The work will continue to be done under the same enhanced safety controls that have proven effective in protecting workers, the public, and the environment.
“PFP demolition forever changed the skyline at Hanford,” said Bob Nichols, director for CPCCo’s inner area end states group. “I’m proud of our team for safely resuming final activities at the PFP site, and I look forward to continuing to work with the Department of Energy and our other cleanup partners to carry this years-long project across the finish line.”
-Contributor: Dieter Bohrmann
 Environmental scientist Tiffany Gamero hosts the EM Nevada Program’s first virtual field trip for students from Lied STEM Academy, part of the Clark County School District.
The students attend Lied STEM Academy, a Las Vegas-based, state-certified magnet school for grades six to eight with a focus on project- and inquiry-based learning. The school’s curriculum coordinators advised that the best format for the virtual event would be live interaction with a subject-matter expert, combined with a variety of video content. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math.
Tiffany Gamero, EM Nevada’s environmental scientist, led the event. She shared a brief history of the NNSS, an introduction to EM, and information on EM Nevada’s groundwater mission at the NNSS. Gamero concluded the presentation with a video demonstrating a typical day in the life of a groundwater technician at the site. After the presentation, she answered questions from students and teachers. View a recording of the virtual field trip here. Students and teachers from Lied have responded to the event with overwhelmingly positive feedback.
“My favorite part from the field trip was how entertaining the videos were and the information they had in them, and how nice the speaker was to everyone,” a student noted.
“I liked the background information in the videos and the explanations of the [NNSS]...very relevant for where we live,” a teacher said.
Lied Principal Derek Fialkiewicz commended EM Nevada for its virtual field trip and said the school looks forward to more of them in the future.
“We are pleased to strengthen our ties with the EM program when it comes to expanding our students' knowledge base of the community while stressing and supporting their pursuit of a STEM education,” Fialkiewicz said. “This was a voluntary sign-up. As you can see from the participation, even towards the end of a school year, our students are engaged and interested in learning what our community has to offer.”
EM Nevada Program Manager Rob Boehlecke was pleased that the field trip was such a success.
“We are grateful to Tiffany for representing our program so well during the virtual field trip. Tiffany has presented at schools in the past and has young children of her own, which gave her a unique perspective on the virtual learning model over the past year,” Boehlecke said. “We look forward to continuing to engage stakeholders in unique ways to share information on our program’s safe, secure, and successful cleanup missions in Nevada.”
Development of the virtual field trip was supported in part by Navarro Research and Engineering, Inc., the environmental program services contractor to EM Nevada, through Navarro’s Community Commitment Program.
Click here for more information on the EM Nevada Program and visit the academy here. -Contributor: Kevin Knapp
 From left, electricians Chris Peck, Chris Bottoms, and Greg Cash work on modifications to relocate personnel and operations from 129,800 square feet of space in the C-720 Maintenance and Storage Building into a smaller facility.
PADUCAH, Ky. – Workers at EM’s Paducah Site recently relocated personnel and operations from 129,800 square feet of space in the C-720 Maintenance and Storage Building to prepare for future deactivation of the large structure.
“The C-720 Maintenance and Storage Building was designed and operated to support the site during uranium enrichment operations,” said Jennifer Woodard, the Paducah Site lead for EM’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. “Since enrichment stopped, the stores and receiving areas are able to operate out of a much smaller area. Moving into a smaller on-site structure is a much more efficient way to operate. This relocation brings us a step closer to being able to deactivate and demolish the building.”
 Approximately 90,000 square feet of stores operations space, equivalent to the size of a city block, was relocated from the C-720 Maintenance and Storage Building to a smaller facility. Pictured here are empty shelves where supplies and inventory were once organized at C-720.
The C-720 building covers about 300,000 square feet, which is comparable in size to three city blocks. The recent consolidation project moved the stores and receiving areas and other office space into other facilities at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site. The configuration that previously supported enrichment-era operations had contributed significantly to utility consumption at the Paducah Site.
Decreasing the building’s occupancy and relocating the operations is a big step toward reducing utility costs, Woodard said.
Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership (FRNP), EM’s deactivation and remediation contractor at the Paducah Site, performed the recent work.
“Our team approached this work with creativity, successfully meeting the challenges of the project without impacting other projects happening at the site,” FRNP Program Manager Myrna Redfield said. “They did the work while operating safely under COVID controls.”
-Contributor: Dylan Nichols
 A full view of the 500,000-square-foot Alpha-4 facility, a Manhattan Project facility slated for demolition in Oak Ridge.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. – EM’s cleanup at the Y-12 National Security Complex continues to expand as workers ready one of the site’s largest high-risk contaminated facilities for demolition.
Oak Ridge has hundreds of excess, contaminated facilities and contains the largest inventory of high-risk structures in the DOE complex. This latest project, and others like it underway by EM, are addressing these hazards and enabling the transformation and modernization of important research and national security sites.
EM contractor UCOR is leading cleanup efforts at the massive four-story Alpha-4 building, which spans more than 500,000 square feet and covers a 13-acre area. This project is challenging not only due to the facility’s size, but also its mercury contamination.
"We are excited to continue moving forward with this major cleanup project,” said Brian Henry, Y-12 portfolio federal project director for DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of EM. “There are a lot of steps involved in addressing a massive building in its deteriorated condition, but each step moves us closer to being able to eliminate a hazard and significantly alter the landscape in the heart of Y-12.”
 A view of the side of the Alpha-4 facility showing one of three Column Exchange processes to be demolished.
The facility was used for uranium separation from 1944 to 1945. A decade later, workers finished installing Column Exchange (COLEX) equipment on the west, east, and south sides of Alpha-4 for lithium separation, a process requiring large amounts of mercury. A significant amount of mercury was lost into the equipment, building, and surrounding soils during those operations. Mercury cleanup is one of EM’s top priorities at Y-12.
Although employees drained the majority of materials from the equipment when operations ended there in the 1960s, recoverable amounts of mercury remained in aging lines and equipment that had rusted and deteriorated over the decades. In recent years, UCOR crews retrieved more than 10,000 pounds of mercury from the COLEX equipment and demolished the equipment on the west side of Alpha-4.
Now, work is underway to deactivate the COLEX equipment on the east side of Alpha-4, and removal of the equipment from its south side will follow. Planning is also taking place for deactivation work required in the facility.
Two pivotal projects are already underway that will enable removal of Alpha-4. The first is construction of the Mercury Treatment Facility. Scheduled to be operational in 2025, the facility will capture and treat mercury releases entering a nearby creek caused by crews and big machinery tearing down Alpha-4 and other large, mercury-contaminated buildings in the area. The facility is designed to treat up to 3,000 gallons of water per minute and includes a 2-million-gallon storage tank to collect stormwater.
Other critical work is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s West End Protected Area Reduction Project, also slated for completion in 2025. That effort is rerouting portions of the high-security area at Y-12 around Alpha-4 and the other mercury-contaminated buildings, allowing enhanced access for cleanup crews and cutting cleanup costs by more than 40 percent.
While cleanup activities are in the early stages at Alpha-4, other crews are deactivating several other 1940s-era buildings at Y-12, including Alpha-2, Beta-1, the Old Steam Plant, and the Old Criticality Experiment Laboratory.
The extensive Y-12 cleanup effort is happening simultaneously with other cleanup projects underway at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where workers are addressing 16 inactive research reactor and isotope facilities.
 Officials representing the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) recently presented donations to three local emergency services organizations. Pictured from left are EM WVDP Director Bryan Bower; West Valley Fire District #1 Board of Fire Commissioners Chairman Eric Boberg; West Valley Fire District #1 Commissioner Derrick Miller; CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley President and General Manager John Rendall; and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority Director Paul Bembia.
WEST VALLEY, N.Y. – Officials with EM, cleanup contractor CH2M HILL BWXT West Valley (CHBWV), and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) recently presented donations to three organizations that provide emergency services to the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) and surrounding community.
The organizations are the West Valley Fire District #1, which received $70,000, and Bertrand Chaffee Hospital and Mercy Flight, which received $5,000 apiece. Mercy Flight provides air ambulance service.
“To be prepared, we must always be learning and training,” EM WVDP Director Bryan Bower said. “All three organizations participate in our emergency planning and on-site drills to ensure readiness at a moment’s notice. This helps to make a difference in the outcome of any emergency related situation.”
Paul Bembia, NYSERDA program director, commended the organizations for their assistance.
“The dedication and commitment of first responders and medical staff provide a sense of safety and security for our employees and the surrounding community,” Bembia said. “Knowing that quality care can be provided at a moment’s notice gives our employees and the community peace of mind. We thank them for their service.”
EM and CHBWV conduct cleanup at the site in partnership with NYSERDA.
CHBWV President and General Manager John Rendall said the three emergency services organizations provide an extra level of care for the WVDP workforce.
“Our employees are fortunate to have these dedicated organizations available, should the need arise,” Rendall said.
-Contributor: Joseph Pillittere
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