Spent Fuel Removal Concludes at Hanford's K Basins-Helping to Restore the Columbia River's Hanford Reach

摘要

Removal of the largest collection of radioactive ma-terials bordering the Columbia River at the U.S. Department of Energy Hanford Site in southeast Washington State was completed on a glorious autumn day in 2004. The Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project, managed for the DOE by prime contractor Fluor Hanford, removed more than 2300 tons (2100 metric tons [MT]) of irradiated uranium fuel—just over 4.65 million pounds—from a historic reactor area along the river's shore, called the Hanford Reach. The project also dried the fuel and placed all of it in safe, dry, interim storage in central Hanford, nine miles from the Columbia and hundreds of feet above the groundwater table, effectively neutralizing the risks formerly posed by the decaying fuel.