The plant began in 1949 with the purpose of on-site production of plutonium metal in a form suitable for weapons at Hanford.[1][2] It also participated in programs to recycle plutonium. One of the projects was the use of mixed plutonium-oxide uranium-oxide (MOX) fuel in the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF). For that project, one of the PFP's tasks was to perform quality assurance for the fuel pins that had been constructed for the FFTF by outside vendors, such as Kerr-McGee, NUMEC, and Babcock & Wilcox.[1][5]
The major activities at PFP generally included:
Created plutonium 'buttons', used to make weapons, until 1989[1][2]
Special nuclear material handling and storage
Plutonium recovery
Plutonium conversion
Laboratory support
Waste handling
Shutdown and operational facility surveillances.[2]
Divisions
Plutonium Conversion Facility
'Remote Mechanical A' line - created plutonium oxide powder
'Remote Mechanical C' line - created metallic plutonium from plutonium nitrate[2]
Plutonium Reclamation Facility
Produced 'high purity plutonium nitrate solution' from a 'variety of feed sources, including scrap'.[2] Started in 1964 [4]
Waste Treatment Facility
Neutralized liquid nuclear waste before it was pumped to Hanford's Tank Farms[2]
Incinerator
Burned old clothes, filters, etc. to recover plutonium residue [3]
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(November 2021)
Before the last four major facilities at the plant could be demolished, approximately 20 years of work was completed to stabilize approximately 20 tons (nearly 18 metric tons) of plutonium-bearing material by 2004;[7] remove legacy plutonium from plant systems by 2005;[8] ship all weapons-grade plutonium out of the plant and to the Savannah River Site by 2009;[9] remove 238 large pieces of contaminated equipment, including glove boxes and fume hoods, and approximately 50 plutonium processing tanks;[10] and demolish numerous plant support facilities, including the vault complex used for secure storage of plutonium by 2012.[11] That preparatory work has been called the most hazardous cleanup work at the Hanford Site and PFP has been called Hanford's most hazardous building.[12]
The Department of Energy's PFP Closure Project intended to have the entire facility cleaned and destroyed down to a concrete slab in 2017,[13] with all contaminated materials moved to other sites.[1] Open-air demolition of the plant's last four remaining major facilities began in November 2016[14] on the plant's Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Demolition of the second major facility, the Americium Recovery Facility, also known as the "McCluskey Room" because of a facility accident in 1976, began in January 2017[15] and was completed in March 2017.[16] Demolition of the third remaining major facility, the ventilation stack and fan house, was completed in July 2017.[17] Demolition of the last of four major remaining facilities, the Main Processing Facility, began in July 2017. [18] As of December 2017, all demolition is on hold, after contamination was found as far away as 10 miles from the site, and found in two car air filters that were checked by a Hanford contractor and deemed clean, but rechecked by an independent lab and were found to have small amounts of radioactive contamination.[19] All demolition and cleanup work was completed in November 2021.[20]
1 2 3 4 5 "Plutonium Finishing Plant"(PDF). Hanford / US Govt. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-09-26. Retrieved 2009-01-20. "From 1949 to 1989, U.S. Department of Energy contractors operated the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) to process plutonium nitrate solutions into a solid form (hockey puck-sized “buttons” or oxide powder) for shipment to the nation’s weapons production facilities."
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It has also been known as SiteW and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the Hanford Engineer Works and B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb, which was tested in the Trinity nuclear test, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki.
Richland is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima and the Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 60,560. Along with the nearby cities of Pasco and Kennewick, Richland is one of the Tri-Cities, and is home to the Hanford nuclear site.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is one of the United States Department of Energy national laboratories, managed by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. The main campus of the laboratory is in Richland, Washington.
Nuclear reprocessing is the chemical separation of fission products and actinides from spent nuclear fuel. Originally, reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. With commercialization of nuclear power, the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors. The reprocessed uranium, also known as the spent fuel material, can in principle also be re-used as fuel, but that is only economical when uranium supply is low and prices are high. Nuclear reprocessing may extend beyond fuel and include the reprocessing of other nuclear reactor material, such as Zircaloy cladding.
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022.
The Rocky Flats Plant was a U.S. manufacturing complex that produced nuclear weapons parts in the western United States, near Denver, Colorado. The facility's primary mission was the fabrication of plutonium pits, which were shipped to other facilities to be assembled into nuclear weapons. Operated from 1952 to 1992, the complex was under the control of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), succeeded by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1977.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository licensed to store transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years. The storage rooms at the WIPP are 2,150 feet underground in a salt formation of the Delaware Basin. The waste is from the research and production of United States nuclear weapons only. The plant started operation in 1999, and the project is estimated to cost $19 billion in total.
The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reservation in the United States, located in the state of South Carolina on land in Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell counties adjacent to the Savannah River. It lies 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Augusta, Georgia. The site was built during the 1950s to refine nuclear materials for deployment in nuclear weapons. It covers 310 square miles (800 km2) and employs more than 10,000 people.
The Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) is a 400 MW thermal, liquid sodium cooled, nuclear test reactor owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. It does not generate electricity. It is situated in the 400 Area of the Hanford Site, which is located in the state of Washington.
PUREX is a chemical method used to purify fuel for nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. PUREX is the de facto standard aqueous nuclear reprocessing method for the recovery of uranium and plutonium from used nuclear fuel. It is based on liquid–liquid extraction ion-exchange.
The La Hague site is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague on the Cotentin Peninsula in northern France, with the Manche storage centre bordering on it. Operated by Orano, formerly AREVA, and prior to that COGEMA, La Hague has nearly half of the world's light water reactor spent nuclear fuel reprocessing capacity. It has been in operation since 1976, and has a capacity of about 1,700 tonnes per year. It extracts plutonium which is then recycled into MOX fuel at the Marcoule site.
The N-Reactor was a water/graphite-moderated nuclear reactor constructed during the Cold War and operated by the U.S. government at the Hanford Site in Washington; it began production in 1963.
Saltcrete is a mixture of cement with salts and brine, usually originating from liquid waste treatment plants. Its role is to immobilize hazardous waste and in some cases lower-level radioactive waste in the form of solid material. It is a form of mixed waste.
Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon, and hydrogen. When exposed to moist air, it forms oxides and hydrides that can expand the sample up to 70% in volume, which in turn flake off as a powder that is pyrophoric. It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous.
The bismuth-phosphate process was used to extract plutonium from irradiated uranium taken from nuclear reactors. It was developed during World War II by Stanley G. Thompson, a chemist working for the Manhattan Project at the University of California, Berkeley. This process was used to produce plutonium at the Hanford Site. Plutonium was used in the atomic bomb that was used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. The process was superseded in the 1950s by the REDOX and PUREX processes.
The Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site was a nuclear fuel production facility located by the Cimarron River near Cimarron City, Oklahoma. It was operated by Kerr-McGee Corporation (KMC) from 1965 to 1975.
Nuclear labor issues exist within the international nuclear power industry and the nuclear weapons production sector worldwide, impacting upon the lives and health of laborers, itinerant workers and their families.
The Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF) is a waste disposal facility located at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington, U.S.. Built in 1996, ERDF collects low-level waste, mixed waste, and other hazardous materials that are generated at Hanford. It does not collect any radioactive waste or other hazardous materials from other sites or the public. The hazardous waste dump was designed to be expanded as needed. The main storage facilities consist of single layer tanks that hold in all more than 17 million tons of nuclear waste. As of 2011, two new super tanks which hold double the amount of the single layer tanks were installed, providing safer levels of radioactivity in the surrounding ground areas and water sheds. Liners were previously installed to collect liquid released by the tanks or rain water that may seep in. The ERDF does not accept liquid waste, but water that seeps into the landfill is treated to keep the surrounding environment safe.
Robert Louis (Bob) Ferguson was a nuclear-trained physicist and a 60-year veteran in the field of nuclear energy. He was best known for being appointed the first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Programs for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by the first Energy Secretary, James Schlesinger, serving from 1978 to 1980 during President Jimmy Carter's administration.
The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, known as the Vit Plant, will process the nuclear waste at the Hanford Site in Washington into a solid glass form using vitrification. A proven technology that has been used at the Savannah River Site and West Valley Demonstration Project, vitrification involves mixing the waste with glass-forming chemicals, heating it to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit, and pouring it into stainless steel containers to solidify.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
