Envirocon recently completed the remediation of more than 75,000 cubic yards of burial ground waste contaminated with both radioactive and hazardous constituents. The site is located along the Columbia River at the Hanford 300 Area near Richland, Washington. The work included design and construction of support facilities, preparation of submittals, excavation of contaminated waste material from five waste burial grounds, support of the client's analytical efforts, backfill of excavated areas, and site regrading.

The initial excavation was accomplished using 100,000-pound excavators, while secondary sorting was performed using an articulated front-end loader and hand sorting by craft personnel. Load out was accomplished using an 80,000-pound excavator. After the primary sorting process, waste material was hauled to the Staging Pile Area using a 25-ton off-road rock truck. During the secondary sorting process, Envirocon discovered, identified, and safely handled numerous bottles, jars and drums containing unknown materials, plutonium, ACP (transite) pipe, asbestos pipe coating (TSI), ACM gasket material, and elemental lead shielding material. Drums and other containers were over packed pending sampling and analysis. Land Disposal Restriction (LDR) materials were sorted and separated for alternate disposal/treatment. Some of the more unusual items excavated included, piping, radioactive sources, a plutonium safe, a haul truck, and three forklifts.

Rick Park and his experienced crew were a key component to the successful completion of this project. He repeatedly demonstrated his innovative approach to working on this site. One of many improvements that Rick implemented included changing the accepted excavation and sorting process to accommodate the potential high radioactive material and excavation into smaller segments. His approach required less handling of material and less equipment, which resulted in significant cost savings to our client.

C.C. Causey and Andrew Simmons were the Health and Safety Representatives on site. Their contribution on this project was significant, ensuring our goal of no OSHA recordables, time-lost accidents, or injuries in over 61,000 manhours. Health and safety personnel worked with operations personnel to introduce remote, wireless monitoring to minimize personnel exposure and continuous monitoring of the excavation face.

Washington Closure Hanford (WCH) was the prime contractor to the U.S. Department of Energy for this project. WCH and their subcontractors proved to be first-class, as they worked closely with Envirocon to ensure that this project was completed safely. The result was the safe, successful completion of a complex environmental remediation project.