Completion of 300 Area Waste Sites Meets TPA Milestone

RICHLAND, Wash. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) met a Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) milestone by completing cleanup work on 11 different waste sites at Hanford’s 300 Area just north of Richland, Wash.
Work on the waste sites began in 2002 and was completed in April by DOE’s River Corridor contractor, Washington Closure Hanford.
During that time, 426,000 tons of soil and debris were removed from the waste sites, with the most significant volumes coming from a waste site called the 618-7 Burial Ground. Volumes of waste in the group of waste sites ranged in size from 10 tons to 178,000 tons removed.
The TPA milestone required that cleanup work be completed before December 31, 2012 at these waste sites: 300-8, 300-18, 300-VTS, 600-47, 600-259, 618-2, 618-3, 618-5, 618-7, 618-8, and 618-13.
Of the 11 waste sites, six were surface sites with smaller volumes of waste, while five of the burial grounds had larger volumes and more significant hazards. One of the most hazardous and challenging burial grounds was 618-7, which held more than 800 barrels of hazardous materials, twenty large contaminated stainless steel tanks, 100 drums of zircaloy chips and extensive amounts of soil and debris containing lead contamination.
DOE’s former contractor, Bechtel Hanford Inc., began work on all but a few of the sites. The cleanup work was later transferred to Washington Closure Hanford when DOE selected the company to lead the River Corridor Closure Project in 2005.
“What we learned from the hazards of the early waste sites gave us a tremendous leg up on the tougher burial grounds,” said Dave Brockman, Manager of the Richland Operations Office. “Our contractors gained a great deal of knowledge about how to safely and efficiently work these hazardous burial grounds.”
John Darby, a project manager for Washington Closure who worked on several of the sites said that work at the 618-2 Burial Ground, “fundamentally changed the way we clean up waste sites at Hanford – from how we protect people to how we manage the site and unknown items we discover along the way. It totally changed our approach to remediation,” said Darby.
With the completion of the burial grounds, most of which were outside the 300 Area perimeter fence, work has shifted to waste sites inside the fence. Most of the remaining sites are associated with buildings that must be removed in order to reach the waste sites underneath.