In the last substantial cleanup of highly radioactive waste in an area of the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Hanford nuclear-waste site that was once the core of nuclear-reactor fuel production for atomic bombs, crews will use a gantry crane and grout to move and seal a vault and tank weighing 1,700 tons. The pick, part of the remediation of Hanford's former "300 Area" complex of hundreds of production buidings, will be the largest ever for transport and burial at the site's waste disposal facility.
Washington Closure Hanford, a joint venture of URS Corp., Bechtel National and CH2M Hill Cos., is responsible for demolishing 328 contaminated buildings, cleaning up 560 waste sites in the 1.5-sq-mile area near the Columbia River, placing two plutonium production reactors and one nuclear facility in interim safe storage, and operating the waste-burial site.