SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The prices of cleaning up a large nuclear weapons complex in Washington state are expressed in billions of dollars and involve decades of work.
But an allocation on the Hanford nuclear reserve is progressing at a much lower price.
The federal government is moving forward with the “cocoon” of 8 plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will place them in a long-term garage state to allow radiation to burn for an era of decades, until it can be dismantled and buried.
“It’s nasty,” Mark French, director of the U. S. Department of Energy, said of the cocoon. “The charge of seeking to dismantle the reactor and demolish the reactor core would be incredibly expensive and put personnel at risk. “
The federal government built nine nuclear reactors at Hanford to produce plutonium for World War II and Cold War atomic bombs. The site along the Columbia River comprises the largest amount of radioactive waste in the United States.
The reactors are now closed and rest as cement fortresses near the town of Richland in southeastern Washington. Six have already been cocoons for long-term storage, and two more are moving in that direction. component of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.
While World War II ended in 1945 and the Cold War in 1989, the United States continues to pay billions of dollars a year for the disposal of nuclear waste produced through atomic weapons that contributed to ending those conflicts. large volume of liquid waste from the production of plutonium, a key element in nuclear weapons.
While liquid waste stored in 177 underground tanks will require decades of paints and billions of dollars to leave blank, efforts to protect the nine plutonium reactors are much closer to completion.
The last two reactors, closed in 1970 and 1971, are about to enter the cocoon phase, when they are covered with metal and cement to prevent radioactivity from escaping into the environment, French said.
The cocoons are expected to last about 75 years, during which time internal radioactivity will have particularly diminished and there will likely be a plan for the final disposal of the remaining parts, French said.
Every five years, enter the reactor construction to make sure there are no leaks or infestations of rodents or birds, he said.
The Hanford cleanup, which has about 11,000 workers and is part of Rhode Island, began in the 1980s and now costs about $2. 5 billion a year. , exposure of workers to radiation and rotation of subcontractors in complex work.
But the management of old reactors is a point.
The reactors, called Reactor B, Reactor C, Reactor D, Reactor DR, Reactor F, Reactor H, Reactor K-East, Reactor K-West and Reactor N, were built between 1943 and 1965.
They were built along the Columbia River due to the abundance of hydroelectric power and cooling water that the reactors need for their operation.
All have been wrapped in K-East and K-West. The Cocooning paintings at the K-East reactor have already begun and are expected to be completed by 2023, French said. Work on the K-West reactor is expected to be completed by 2026.
The cocoon plan for K-East and K-West is necessarily to build metal constructions around them, each construction measuring 158 feet (48. 2 meters) long, 151 feet (46 meters) wide and 123 feet (37. 5 meters) high, French said. The two metal constructions will charge less than $10 million each.
The government also operated five plutonium production reactors at the Savannah River site in South Carolina during the Cold War. All are also closed, although several reactor buildings are used to purchase radioactive materials.
Future generations will use the final design of Hanford’s 8 reactors, French said. Most likely, they will be dismantled and buried in the central domain of the Hanford site, away from the river.
“It’s possible that robots will be deployed in the future” for this work, French said.
Hanford’s guard dogs agree to this process, said Tom Carpenter, director of the Seattle-based tracking organization Hanford Challenge.
“No one is raising considerations about the cocoon,” Carpenter said. We are all involved with tank waste that requires immediate and urgent attention. “
The most important is whether long-term generations will be willing to pay the huge prices of cleaning Up Hanford, he said.
Carpenter said the estimated charge of cleaning up absolutely only tank debris in Hanford is about $660 billion.
“It’s sinister. It’s multigenerational,” he said.
“It will carry more than anyone would have imagined,” Carpenter said of the tank and others who threw themselves to the ground in Hanford. “It’s a hidden charge of (nuclear) accumulation. “
Until then, there may be more important budgetary considerations, such as managing the effects of climate change, Carpenter said.
The most intriguing of the old reactors is reactor B, the first reactor built in World War II, which will not pile up and can be visited by tourists in the National Historical Park. Reactor B, which closed in 1968, has been cleaned enough to allow about 10,000 tourists to stop by each year and be informed about Hanford’s history. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Plutonium from the Hanford B reactor used to test the world’s first atomic bomb in July 1945, called the Trinity Test, the bomb exploded in the New Mexico desert. Hanford plutonium was also used for the bomb that fell on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. .