Hanford’s 118-K-1 Solid Waste Burial Ground is located near the K-East and K-West Reactor areas and was in operation from 1955 until 1971.  The waste found in this burial ground came from activities at both of those reactors, as well as from the N-Reactor. 

As with the other burial grounds which are found near the deactivated reactors, 118-K-1 consists of a series of trenches and pits of various sizes.  Crews from Washington Closure Hanford are currently involved in the work of digging up and removing the waste, as well as any soil which may have become contaminated by the waste over the years. 

When it comes to remediating burial grounds like 118-K-1, crews must spend a lot of time doing research about the burial ground and preparing for the digging itself before excavators can begin the work of physically removing the waste.  Crews have to review records to determine what kinds of materials and waste could be found, burial ground boundaries must be pinpointed, plans must be implemented to prepare for any unexpected wastes or hazardous wastes that are uncovered, and most important, crews must also understand the steps that have to be taken in order to protect the workers during the remediation activities.

After the research work and preparations for digging up a burial ground are completed, a typical burial ground remediation project begins with excavators digging up the soil.  Whenever waste is uncovered, it is sorted, characterized, and surveyed for radioactivity.  Contaminated soil is also characterized and surveyed.  Almost all of the wastes removed from burial grounds like 118-K-1 is loaded into trucks, then covered, and then hauled to the Site’s Environmental Protection Agency-regulated landfill called ERDF (Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility).
 

Because the waste found in 118-K-1 came from reactor operations, crews expected to find, and in fact have found some materials with high radioactive dose rates.  Some of these items include hardware from the reactors themselves as well as two vertical silos which contain nickel-plated boron balls.  These boron balls were part of the reactors’ emergency control system, and represented a way to shut down the reactor whenever operators weren’t able to use the standard method of inserting control rods or safety rods to stop the nuclear chain reaction.