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Local company receives $4.3 million to provide utilities for burial ground cleanup

01.31.2012

Washington Closure Hanford has awarded a subcontract worth nearly $4.3 million to Cheyenne Electric Inc., a small, disadvantaged business in Kennewick, Washington.

The subcontract is to install water lines and electricity, and construct roads, parking lots and container transfer areas at the 618-11 Burial Ground.  Cheyenne Electric will begin work at the burial ground this spring and is expected to finish the project in late 2012.

The 618-11 Burial Ground is one of the most difficult cleanup challenges Washington Closure has faced to date.  The site is located north of the 300 Area, adjacent to Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station – a commercial nuclear power plant – and near the Columbia River.  From March 1962through December 1967, the burial ground received radioactive waste from Hanford’s reactor fuel development and manufacturing facilities.

“It will take several years to complete cleanup of the burial ground,” said Rob Cantwell, director of field remediation for Washington Closure. “The utilities and infrastructurewill allow us to protect our workers, the public and the environment during cleanup activities.” 

Washington Closure manages the $2.3 billion River Corridor Closure Project at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 586-square-mile Hanford Site in south central Washington State.  The 220-square-mile River Corridor is DOE’s largest environmental closure cleanup project and is on track for completion in2015.

Available waste disposal records of the 618-11 Burial Ground are not complete, so in 2011 Washington Closure performed geophysical surveying and non-intrusive characterization of the burial ground to gain a better understanding of its contents.

The burial ground contains three slope-sided trenches, 50 vertical pipe units and four large caissons into which Hanford workers dumped waste material.  Low- to-moderate-activity radioactive waste typically was disposed in the trenches, and moderate- to-high activity radioactive waste was disposed in the vertical pipe units and caissons.

The vertical pipe units typically were constructed by welding five, 55-gallon bottomless drums end to end.  The caissons were constructed of corrugated metal pipe (8-foot diameter, 10-foot long), with the top of the caisson 15 feet below grade and connected to the surface by an offset 3-foot pipe.  The trenches are 900 feet long by 500 feet wide and 25 feet deep.

Full-scale remediation of the burial ground is expected to begin in mid-2013.

Washington Closure is a limited liability company managed by URS, Bechtel and CH2M Hill. It manages the $2.3 billion River Corridor Closure Project for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office.  The company is responsible for cleaning up 555 waste sites, demolishing 329 contaminated buildings, placing two plutonium production reactors and one nuclear facility in interim safe storage, and operating Hanford’s Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility.

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