The Department of Energy’s Hanford site in Washington recently finished the demolition of the 71,000-square-foot 308 Building used to test reactor fuel, including plutonium, during the Cold War.
Years of work to safely bring down the structure involved removing 52 glove boxes in 2010. The building also housed the Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics (TRIGA) test reactor built in 1971 for fuel research. Contractor Washington Closure Hanford – owned by URS, Bechtel and CH2M Hill – plans to move the 250-ton reactor itself to another part of the Hanford site this fall.
In a release Tuesday announcing the finished demolition of the two-story building, Washington Closure executive Gary Snow said, “This is another major step toward cleaning up the U.S. Department of Energy’s largest environmental cleanup closure site. … Our dedicated workforce put in a tremendous amount of effort to stabilize the building, allowing us to safely complete demolition and stay on track to meet DOE’s 2015 vision.”