Soil & Groundwater Remediation Project

Soil & Groundwater

Introduction

At the Hanford Site, the U.S. Department of Energy is engaged in one of the most complex and challenging environmental cleanup projects in history. From the 1940s through most of the 1980s, the United States used the site to produce nuclear material for national defense. The mission changed in the late 1980s from production to environmental cleanup.

Overall environmental cleanup of the 586-square-mile Hanford Site encompasses technical and logistical challenges:

1,700 waste sites
450 billion gallons of liquid waste discharged to the soil, creating 5 million cubic yards of contaminated soil
270 billion gallons of groundwater contaminated above the drinking water standards over an area of approximately 80 square miles
53 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste in 177 underground storage tanks
22,000 drums of mixed waste
2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel
17.8 metric tons of plutonium-bearing material
500 contaminated facilities
9 nuclear reactors to dismantle

The CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC) assumed responsibility for the Plateau Remediation Contract October 1, 2008. The Plateau Remediation Contract is performance-based and focused on cleaning up Hanford’s 100K Area and Central Plateau and the groundwater beneath the entire Hanford Site.

Safety and environmental management are systematically integrated into work practices so scope identified in the Plateau Remediation Contract is accomplished while protecting the worker, the public, and the environment. Scope includes:

Move K Basins sludge to the Central Plateau, treat and store the sludge, and close the 100K facilities and waste sites
Place the K East and K West Reactors in interim safe storage
Treat and dispose of low-level, mixed low-level, and transuranic wastes
Retrieve suspect, post-1970 transuranic waste
Monitor, characterize, and remediate groundwater and waste sites
Ship special nuclear materials offsite
Clean out and demolish the Plutonium Finishing Plant to “slab on grade”
Clean out and demolish selected industrial and nuclear facilities
Shut down activities at the Fast Flux Test Facility
Establish long-term surveillance and maintenance at decommissioned facilities and waste sites