Cave-In of a Nuclear Materials store at Hanford Nuclear Site

[Bob]

HANFORD EMERGENCY INFORMATION

Event Summary 5/9/2017 10:37 AM

HANFORD SITE EMERGENCY

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Richland Operations Office activated the Hanford Emergency Operations Center at 8:26 a.m., after an alert was declared.

Officials are responding to reports of a cave-in of a 20 foot section of a tunnel that is hundreds of feet long that is used to store contaminated materials.

The tunnel is located next to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, also known as PUREX, which is located in the center of the Hanford Site in an area known as the 200 East Area.

There is no indication of a release of contamination at this point.

Crews are continuing to survey the area for contamination. All personnel in the vicinity of the PUREX facility have been accounted for and there are no reports of injuries.

Actions taken to protect site employees include:

• As a precaution, workers in the vicinity of the PUREX facility as well as the Hanford Site north of the Wye Barricade (southern entrance to the site) have been told to shelter in-place
• Access to the 200 East Area of the Hanford Site, which is located in the center of the Hanford Site, has been restricted to protect employees

updates here: http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/eoc/?page=290

[Bob]

Location map of area:

and

This apparently is a "surface covered "burm" which encompasses a "tunnel" - it appears that the hole exposes the contents to the environment (air migration)

12:08 PM --
There is still no indication of a release of contamination from the hole in the PUREX tunnel. Crews are continuing to monitor the air in the vicinity and have not detected contamination.

Hanford Site employees north of the Wye Barricade and outside of the 200 East Area are now being released from work early as a precaution (as of 12:00 PM).

Personnel in the 200 East Area remain sheltered in-place.

[pyrangello]

Alternative news are saying tunnel only had 8ft of dirt above it to begin with , one possible cause could be earthquake swarms on surrounding area over time which would make sense to weaken the tunnel itself, other facts are sketchy but even in this picture, there are no people around this hole and this hole could have been there for days before it was discovered as well. just a drip drip of info out there. Lost of speculation as well.

[justntime2learn]

Thank you so much Bob!

When I first heard the story at work today I felt you would be the first with insight and thank you again!

I live in Oregon and have been watching this closely. My fiances Dad had top secret clearance for the Corps of Engineers, and worked at Richland, Washington in the 70's. He told some members of the family that there had been leaks at that time into the Columbia River and more. He also had top secret clearance at Boeing and Puget Sound Naval Ship yard both in the 50's. He was concerned for the Richland tunnels in the future and expressed that to his wife. She and He were both "downwinders" in Idaho during the nuclear testing in Nevada and succumbed to lung cancer (although neither smoked) along with many others in the aftermath.

[Bob]

There is real time weather information for the Hanford Site -

Currently from station at 200E (see map above)

Time: 14:45:00 PST Date: 5/9/2017

Ave Wind Direction = 197 degrees (to the SSW)
Ave Wind Speed = 5
Max Wind Speed = 11

reference: http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HMS/RealTimeMetData

and

http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/hms/realtime.cfm (all stations reporting)

this tool converts degrees into compass directions:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/degrees2direct.html

[Bob]

Hanford site

The Federal government created Hanford at the height of World War II as part of a hush-hush project to build the atomic bomb. The site produced plutonium for the world's first atomic blast and for one of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. It continued production through the Cold War.

In 2006, "60 Minutes" covered the mind-boggling mistakes made at the site, like the decision to build a pretreatment facility for radioactive waste that wasn't designed to withstand an earthquake.

Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup expected to last decades. It contains about 56 million gallons of radioactive waste, most of it in 177 underground tanks.

The latest estimate to finish the overall cleanup is more than $107 billion. The work would take until 2060. The Energy Department in recent years has spent about $2 billion a year on cleanup work.

Hanford, which has more than 9,000 employees, is located near Richland, about 200 miles southeast of Seattle.

The massively contaminated PUREX building is the long building in the background - one of the tunnels is shown highlighted:

Inside one of the rooms at the PUREX facility:

Overview of the 'tunnels'

[Bob]

Image rendering of what the tunnels look like

[avid]

[/YOUTUBE]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9mtIbpL5RsM[/YOUTUBE]
Dutchsinse predicted earthquake swarm here days ago.
He is a bit 'hyper' here, but throws in some useful references.

Sorry, can't 'go advanced' here, everything has gone 'pear-shaped'!

[pyrangello]

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-new...apses_05092017

[Bob]

Looking at the town Richland, just south of Hanford, there is a real-time gamma monitor there - no levels of dangerous rates are appearing at this time. One can review the trend over a few months and note periodic slight upticks, followed by down trends.. the average remains about the same.



https://www3.epa.gov/radnet00/images...d-gammasum.jpg

between January 14 and February 14, there was what appeared to be some deviation from the 'norm' levels.

If one looks closely at the right of the graph, one can compare that with a few previous days to see the "trend"

[Bob]

Here is a current set of pix of crews adding dirt to the cave-in

9:37 AM --

Crews have begun filling a collapsed section of a rail car tunnel on the Hanford Site, located next to a former chemical processing facility known as the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant, or PUREX. The hole is being filled with soil using heavy equipment. Approximately 50 truckloads of soil will be used to fill the hole.

Hanford personnel worked throughout the night to stabilize site conditions near the collapsed section of the PUREX tunnel. Crews constructed a gravel road that leads to the tunnel’s collapsed section, which provided a stable and clear path for workers to fill the hole in the tunnel.

Workers performing the recovery actions are wearing protective suits and breathing masks. Also, additional measures are being taken to ensure workers are safe, such as restricting access to the immediate area and air monitoring.

The tunnel is one of two rail car tunnels constructed in the 1950s and 1960s near the site’s PUREX Plant to store contaminated equipment, loaded on rail cars, from plutonium production operations at the site in southeastern Washington state.

The tunnels were constructed of wood and concrete with a soil covering approximately 8 feet deep. The tunnels, which are hundreds of feet long, are located east of the PUREX Plant and extend to the south. The plant and tunnels are located near the center of the Hanford Site, in an area known as the 200 East Area.

[Bob]

In Post #7 above, a cross section view of one of the radioactive materials tunnels.

Instead of a concrete encased tunnel what was used was "Pressure Treated Douglas Fir".

What is not specified is the chemical used during the "treatment".

The wood roof and walls were in contact with soil since 1956. 61 years exposed to soil conditions.

Pressure treated wood has a specification of duration of "lasting" without falling apart, from 25 years through 60 years typically. In the desert it can last longer. In Oregon and Washington State, the conditions are not "desert-like".

Therefore, one could expect numerous cave-ins due to the wood rotting from age/weather conditions..

Stupid to have used wood instead of concrete.. Again another failure at Hanford..

ref wood pressure treated life: https://www.landscapingnetwork.com/w...ning-wood.html
Ref PUREX wood tunnel reinforcement/construction: http://media.spokesman.com/photos/20...a1515850fa88e8

[Satori]

Given the design and materials and the age of the structure as depicted post #7, it's reasonable to conclude that it doesn't require an earthquake to cause the type of failure we see. What we are learning from Oroville dam alone informs us that reinforced concrete is not as stable as we are led to believe, especially as time passes. Moisture in the soils leeches into the concrete and rusts the steel rebar. Rusted, oxidized, steel expands as the steel turns to the rusty brown crusty stuff that you can peel off. The expansion puts forces on the concrete footing and weakens it. The rebar also weakens as it rusts and in turn future weakens the concrete. Couple this with the weight from above, the footing fails, the timber collapses, the earth above collapses and there you have it--a sinkhole of sorts. But a problematic one for sure.

[Bob]

Was this collapse just some accident, a weak spot? Actually there was a warning in 2015 that the tunnels may collapse..

Hanford was warned in 2015 study that contaminated rail car tunnels at risk of collapse



"Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Energy was warned that two tunnels containing radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation were vulnerable to collapse.

On Tuesday, part of one tunnel failed, triggering an emergency at the nuclear site that required Hanford employees to shelter in place while workers checked for radiation releases.

No one was hurt and no radiation leaks were detected. But problems related to the tunnel’s deteriorating wood timbers from exposure to radioactivity had been identified in a 2015 risk assessment commissioned by the Energy Department."

The second tunnel design was built with steel beams and concrete. This designed provided adequate structural support for containing the radioactive wastes.

The first tunnel though, was of a wood support design. That is what gave way.

A second storage tunnel wasn’t affected by the collapse. Built in 1964 with steel beams and concrete arches, it holds 28 rail cars filled with radioactive waste.

The timbers in the wood-framed tunnel were deteriorating because of exposure to gamma rays from radioactive material stored in the tunnel. But the report also said the likelihood of collapse was about 30 years away.

The writers of the report thought the wood would last 90 years. Pressure treated wood under good conditions could be expected to last 60 years. The gamma irradiation appears to have shortened that lifespan.

"Vanderbilt University led the preliminary “risk review,” which looked at potential dangers from delaying clean up at various areas of Hanford.

The review said both tunnels were at risk from an earthquake, which could lead to their collapse and releases of radiation."

Last year, the Energy Department was given a September 2017 deadline for starting an assessment of the tunnels’ structural integrity, the Tri-City Herald reported.

No spent fuel rods were put in the tunnels, which contain “big, bulky things,” such as equipment, she said. Though there is radioactive dust and debris in the tunnels, they are contained in glove boxes.

Over 70,000 tons of reactor fuel rods containing Uranium were processed a the PUREX facility. The waste was put into the tunnels with hopes that at some future time, there would be a proper way to decontaminate the debris.

Tom Carpenter, executive director of the watchdog group Hanford Challenge makes a few statements and observations:

“In our view this is a wakeup call,” he added. “You’ve got other dangers and risks at Hanford that are much worse than these tunnels.”

If a tank with high-level nuclear waste had collapsed, Carperter said there could have been serious consequences for workers’ health and safety and the potential for off-site releases.

“We’re impatient with the government for not leaping onto these issues and not managing these risks better,” he said.

source material - http://www.spokesman.com/stories/201...taminated-rai/

[Bob]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ev5lu6xya5s

The emergency group coordinator says "Emergency is Over"

(see above post about the emergency situation not being remedied completely)

Latest official posted information:

10 May 2017
11:24 PM --
Crews at the Hanford Site have filled the hole in the tunnel near the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) with soil. Approximately 53 truckloads of soil, or approximately 550 cubic yards of soil, were used by crews to fill the hole.

Before allowing uncontrolled access to the area where the partial tunnel collapse occurred, officials plan to take additional near-term actions to ensure the safety of the workforce and the public.

These actions may include placing a cover over the entire tunnel, which is approximately 360 feet long.

Officials will also identify and implement longer-term actions. No radiological contamination was detected as a result of the collapse or while the hole was being filled.

However, until additional actions can be taken to ensure safety, access to portions of the Hanford Site’s 200 East Area will continue to be restricted.

Hmm.. placing a "tarp" over the dirt, covering the burm and the tunnel within..

When the Clean-UP happens

How would they get the contamination from within the tunnels into safe treatment areas without spreading the contained particles into the atmosphere?