Hundreds of workers at a nuclear site in the U.S. state of Washington were ordered to take cover today after a storage tunnel filled with contaminated material partially collapsed, but there was no indication of a radioactive leak.
The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency alert Tuesday morning at the Hanford site north of Richland, Washington, after a tunnel at a radioactive cleanup site caved in. Alvarez said that contaminated pieces of equipment, including the rail cars, have been left in the tunnels. "The subsidence of soil was discovered during a routine surveillance of the area by workers", it said.
No injuries have been reported but about 3,000 workers have been evacuated or told to seek shelter and take steps to block all ventilation systems.
A spokeswoman at the Department of Energy said almost 5,000 employees were at the Hanford Site, which spreads across 586 square miles (1,518 square kilometers), when the emergency was declared and they were ordered to take cover. The tunnel contained railroad cars full of spent fuel rods.
"At that point after noticing the soil had sunk over one of the tunnels there was an emergency declared", Henderson said.
"No action is now required for residents of Benton and Franklin counties", the Energy Department said, referring to the almost 300,000 residents near the site.
Non-essential workers are being sent home from a nuclear waste storage site in Washington state after the partial collapse of an underground tunnel where nuclear waste is kept in rail cars.
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The PUREX plant "generated quite a significant amount of waste material which was stored onsite, primarily in tanks", Luxat said.
Two tunnels were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s next to the former Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) located in an industrial area near the centre of the Hanford Site called the 200 East Area.
The post Nuclear waste tunnel collapses at Hanford site in Washington state appeared first on PBS NewsHour. The government has been working since the late 1980s to clean up Hanford, and the work is expected to last until 2060 and cost another $100 billion. No radiation leak has been detected and no release of contamination has been determined according to a Hanford Site press release release.
"Department of Energy Richland Office", Inslee said.
A U.S. Department of Energy news release says Perry was told the agency will monitor the situation.
Officials report that they've just observed a sunken area in the soil and it's unclear whether the tunnel has collapsed.
"This is a serious situation, and ensuring the safety of the workers and the community is the top priority", Inslee said. The building, which is the length of three football fields, has been vacant for more than two decades but remains highly contaminated, according to the website. Hanford made the plutonium for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and much of the plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal.
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