RICHLAND, Wash. — Hundreds of workers at Hanford Nuclear Reservation were evacuated Tuesday after part of a tunnel, which stores rail cars filled with radioactive waste, collapsed.
Officials detected no radiation release, and no workers were in the tunnel when it caved in, said Randy Bradbury, a spokesman for the Washington state Department of Ecology. Around 11 a.m. PT, a robot was being used to sample contamination in the air and on the ground.
Hanford contractors working nearby were removed from the area while those farther away on the the 586-square-mile site were told to remain indoors, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The complex, about half the size of Rhode Island and located along the Columbia River, has more than 9,000 employees.
A manager sent a message to all personnel telling them to "secure ventilation in your building" and "refrain from eating or drinking."
he tunnel, which is hundreds of feet long and covered with about 8 feet of soil, contains highly contaminated materials such as trains that transported nuclear fuel rods. It connects to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, known at the site as PUREX.
The 20-foot-by-20-foot collapse occurred at one of two rail tunnels under the PUREX site, Bradbury said. In the past, rail cars full of radioactive waste were driven into the tunnels and buried.
The closed PUREX plant was part of the nation’s nuclear weapons production complex.
Hanford — about 20 miles northwest of Richland, 150 miles southeast of Seattle and less than 50 miles from the Oregon border — was built during World War II and made the plutonium for most of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. For decades afterward, workers made plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Hanford's emergency operations center was activated at 8:26 a.m., and long-time workers think it may be the first time it was opened for a possible radioactive release. Oregon's Department of Energy also activated its own emergency operations center.
“Hanford is 35 miles away from Oregon,” said Rachel Wray, Oregon Energy Department spokeswoman. “We are concerned about Oregonians’ health and that concerns the food we eat.”
Today the site contains 56 million gallons of radioactive waste and is the largest depository of radioactive waste from the Defense Department. Contractors are in the midst of a decades-long process of cleanup.
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