Fluor Hanford ALARA Center is a D and D Resource
- Fluor Hanford Inc, P.O. Box 1000, Richland, WA 99352 (United States)
The mission at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation changed when the last reactor plant was shut down in 1989 and work was started to place all the facilities in a safe condition and begin decontamination, deactivation, decommissioning, and demolition (D and D). These facilities consisted of old shutdown reactor plants, spent fuel pools, processing facilities, and 177 underground tanks containing 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and toxic liquids and sludge. New skills were needed by the workforce to accomplish this mission. By 1995, workers were in the process of getting the facilities in a safe condition and it became obvious improvements were needed in their tools, equipment and work practices. The Hanford ALARA Program looked good on paper, but did little to help contractors that were working in the field. The Radiological Control Director decided that the ALARA program needed to be upgraded and a significant improvement could be made if workers had a place they could visit that had samples of the latest technology and could talk to experienced personnel who have had success doing D and D work. Two senior health physics personnel who had many years experience in doing radiological work were chosen to obtain tools and equipment from vendors and find a location centrally located on the Hanford site. Vendors were asked to loan their latest tools and equipment for display. Most vendors responded and the Hanford ALARA Center of Technology opened on October 1, 1996. Today, the ALARA Center includes a classroom for conducting training and a mockup area with gloveboxes. Two large rooms have a containment tent, several glove bags, samples of fixatives/expandable foam, coating displays, protective clothing, heat stress technology, cutting tools, HEPA filtered vacuums, ventilation units, pumps, hydraulic wrenches, communications equipment, shears, nibblers, shrouded tooling, and several examples of innovative tools developed by the Hanford facilities. See Figures I and II. The ALARA Center staff routinely researches and tests new technology, sponsor vendor demonstrations, and redistribute tools, equipment and temporary shielding that may not be needed at one facility to another facility that needs it. The ALARA Center staff learns about new technology in several ways. This includes past radiological work experience, interaction with vendors, lessons learned, networking with other DOE sites, visits to the Hanford Technical Library, attendance at off-site conferences and ALARA Workshops. Personnel that contact the ALARA Center for assistance report positive results when they implement the tools, equipment and work practices recommended by the ALARA Center staff. This has translated to reduced exposure for workers and reduced the risk of contamination spread. For example: using a hydraulic shear on one job saved 16 Rem of exposure that would have been received if workers had used saws-all tools to cut piping in twenty-nine locations. Currently, the ALARA Center staff is emphasizing D and D techniques on size-reducing materials, decontamination techniques, use of remote tools/video equipment, capture ventilation, fixatives, using containments and how to find lessons learned. The ALARA Center staff issues a weekly report that discusses their interaction with the workforce and any new work practices, tools and equipment being used by the Hanford contractors. Distribution of this weekly report is to about 130 personnel on site and 90 personnel off site. This effectively spreads the word about ALARA throughout the DOE Complex. DOE EM-23, in conjunction with the D and D and Environmental Restoration work group of the Energy Facility Contractors Organization (EFCOG) established the Hanford ALARA Center as the D and D Hotline for companies who have questions about how D and D work is accomplished. The ALARA Center has become a resource to the nuclear industry and routinely helps contractors at other DOE Sites, power reactors, DOD sites, and sites in England, Europe and Indonesia. Other ALARA Centers are located at the Savannah River Site and Los Alamos National Lab.
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, Illinois 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 21144245
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: DD and R 2007: ANS Topical Meeting on Decommissioning, Decontamination, and Reutilization 2007, Chattanooga, TN (United States), 16-19 Sep 2007; Other Information: Country of input: France; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2007 ANS Topical Meeting on Decommissioning, Decontamination, and Reutilization - DD and R 2007, 336 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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