West Valley — A train with 12 containers of the first demolition wreckage from the Main Plant Process Building of the West Valley Demonstration Project in Ashford has been shipped from the site by rail.
Members of the West Valley Citizens Task Force learned of a milestone Wednesday night at the group’s monthly meeting. This is the first time since dismantling materials from a nuclear waste disposal site have been removed.
Kelly Woolley, deputy manager of CHBWV, the contractor involved in the decontamination at WVDP, sent photos to the Task Force on the first day of “demolition” of the Main Plant Process Building, where 640 tons of spent nuclear fuel were processed. I showed it to a member of From 1966 to 1972 he extracted uranium and plutonium.
After the plant closed, Congress passed and President Jimmy Carter signed the West Valley Demonstration Projects Act of 1980. The cleanup began the following year and so far has continued for the past 40 years at a cost of over $3 billion. The New York State Department of Energy Research and Development administers the New York State concession and pays him 10% of the cleanup costs.
There were no business stoppage accidents associated with the demolition of the process building at the head office factory. If monitoring of nuclear material around the demolition site is initiated, all activity is to cease until the reason for the level change is identified.
The five-story buildings are made of reinforced concrete and some are over three feet thick. In areas where the walls still have high levels of radioactivity, the surface is milled and coated with a blue fixative designed to bond to concrete.
The crew has spent most of the last 20 years removing more than 7 miles of contaminated piping and over 50 tons of contaminated equipment and other hazardous materials such as asbestos from the 35,100 square foot facility. I was. His over 98% of the radioactivity in the building has been removed.
Demolition is expected to take about 30 months. WVDP officials estimate it will take 1,500 of his intermodal containers loaded onto railcars to complete the project.
Demolition projects further reduce environmental risks and position the site for the next cleanup phase.
The demolition of the main plant process building to ground level marks the end of Phase 1 of the cleanup.
A second phase investigation is underway into what to do with the remaining radioactive material in the underground tanks and the strontium-90 plume generated in the headquarters process building. The study focuses on state and federal low-level landfills adjacent to WVDP sites.
Rail spurs within the Buffalo & Pittsburgh Railroad-owned WVDP site and rails south of the site were rehabilitated prior to use to safely move material from the Main Plant Process Building.
EM WVDP Main Plant Project Director Stephen Bousquet said, “The railroad is being used for the main plant’s process building demolition and future on-site cleaning operations. It represents an excellent method of waste disposal, which will help accelerate future restoration work.”
By transporting demolition waste materials by rail, the amount of vehicle traffic associated with truck transportation is reduced and safety is improved.
Rail transport is more efficient because more materials can be transported at once than truck transport. Busquet said train shipping costs less than trucking and saves taxpayers dollars.
