![](https://www.nwpb.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/554529927.jpg)
Hanford Crews Nearly Ready To Seal Up Tunnel With Grout
Listen
Crews at the Hanford Site in southeast Washington state are running through rehearsals and last minute details. In early October, they’ll begin pouring grout, a kind of thin cement, into a partially collapsed tunnel full of highly contaminated radioactive waste.
“Tunnel 1” is connected to the PUREX plant, a mothballed plutonium processing factory. This past spring, the train tunnel partially collapsed causing an emergency at Hanford.
Now, the government has hired a contractor to fill the tunnel up with grout to stabilize it and keep it from collapsing further
It’s a major operation. The tunnel will take about 600 trucks of grout and about one month to fill up. It will all happen at night so the trucks don’t get stuck in traffic.
Workers have installed pipes that run down into the tunnel and a scaffold over the tunnel they call “the bridge.”
The contractor doing the work, CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company, said the grout mixture will be warm, but not at temperatures that will be trouble for the radioactive waste.
Critics of the plan worry that the federal government will never remove all this grout and the radioactive waste it encapsulates. They don’t want it to become a near-surface radioactive waste dump.
![](https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Hanford+Crews+Nearly+Ready+To+Seal+Up+Tunnel+With+Grout%C2%A0%E2%80%A8&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAyNTQ1NzQ1MDEyMjk0OTcxNTI4MzljZQ001))
Related Stories:
![Retreat fire in-Rimrock-area, Yakima-County. (Credit: Inciweb)](https://www.nwpb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Retreat-fire-in-Rimrock-area-Yakima-County-500x500.jpg)
Intense fire week forces road closures and evacuation notices in WA
Fire crews continue firing wildfires to keep on high alert in the Northwest.
![](https://www.nwpb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/groundbreaking-500x500.jpg)
‘We’re just getting started’ | Haaland highlights major salmon recovery effort with $16M investment
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland celebrated with Gov. Jay Inslee, state, local, and Native American tribal leaders break ground at the new passage facility Wednesday, July 24, 2024
![Creator and host Alec Cowan’s shadow during a tour of the Sunday Mine Complex, a complex of five uranium mines in the Big Gypsum Valley near Paradox, Colorado, on Feb. 19, 2024.](https://www.nwpb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Alec_Mine-Shadow-500x500.jpg)
Boom Town: New Northwest-made podcast explores Western uranium mining and Hanford downwinders
Creator and host Alec Cowan’s shadow during a tour of the Sunday Mine Complex, a complex of five uranium mines in the Big Gypsum Valley near Paradox, Colorado, on Feb.