Treatment plan for protection of cultural resources for the 100-KR-4 pump-and-treat project

摘要

The 100-K Reactor Area is located on the southern shore of the Columbia River at the northern edge of the Hanford Site. The K-East and K-West reactors operated from 1955 to 1971 as part of the US efforts to produce weapons grade nuclear materials. Reactor operations required the use of water from the Columbia River to cool the reactors. Occasionally, reactor equipment would malfunction causing radioactive contamination in the cooling water. On these occasions, rather than being discharged to the Columbia River, the water was discharged to a trench, approximately 1.61 km (1 mi) long, located to the east of the reactor area. This discharged cooling water, in addition to being radioactively contaminated, also contained significant quantities of chromium that had been used to prevent corrosion within the reactors, After the cooling water had been discharged into the trench, it percolated into the ground and traveled toward the Columbia River via the groundwater flow. Current interim remediation activities planned for this part of the 100-K Area are focused on protecting the Columbia River by pumping the chromium contaminated groundwater to a treatment system. The treated water will then be pumped back into the ground upstream of the trench. This document describes how the planned construction activities have been modified to protect the extremely sensitive cultural resources in the area.