Cocooning complete for Hanford reactor
By Terry Murry on Friday, October 28th, 2022 in Columbia Basin News Featured Stories
RICHLAND, Washington – Workers with Hanford Site contractor, Central Plateau Cleanup Company recently completed construction of a protective enclosure over the former K East Reactor building.
The cocoon, which is a huge steel structure, is more than 120 feet tall and 150 feet wide. The interim safe storage structure is supposed to protect the K East Reactor building while the radioactivity in the deactivated reactor core decays over the next several decades, making it safer to complete disposition of the reactor in the future.
Work on the project began in August 2021. Earlier this year, crews finished backfilling and compacting the area around the former reactor with approximately 34,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel to level the site before pouring a 6-foot-thick concrete foundation to support construction of the cocoon. The first steel columns for the enclosure were placed in mid-May with construction of the frame and installation of the metal sheeting on the walls and roof continuing through the summer.
The cocoon’s design allows for routine inspections of the reactor every five years. During an inspection, radiation technicians will confirm no contamination is leaving the sealed reactor core, and that nothing is entering the building from the outside. The K East Reactor operated from 1955 to 1971 and is the seventh of Hanford’s nine former reactors to be cocooned. The nearby K West Reactor will be the eighth.
The ninth, the B Reactor, has been preserved as the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor and is part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Hanford’s other six reactors were cocooned between 1998 and 2012.
