hanford vitrification plant
Construction Update, November 2009
Low-Activity Waste Vitrification Facility
- Installing pipe and hangers at the +3 elevation
- Installed HEPA units at the +48’ elevation
- Coating walls and embeds for fireproofing at the –21 and +3 elevations
Analytical Laboratory
- Continued to install pipe above the hot cell
- Continued to install piping in the utility room
- Setting electrical equipment in planning area 23
Pretreatment Facility
- Building rebar curtains for the +77’ elevation
- Currently installing embeds and rebar in hot cell
- Poured concrete slab at the +77’ elevation
Balance of Facilities — 20 support facilities and underground utilities
- Completed installing cathodic protection in the 4Z trench
- Installing conduit and fire detection in the chiller compressor plant building 82
High-Level Waste Vitrification Facility
- Currently installing rails in the canister storage transfer and cask handling tunnels at the –31’ elevation
- Setting heavy shield plates and rebar curtain
- Installing steel decking and rebar for second story slabs
A bit of perspective
- Plant construction requires more than 257,000
cubic yards of concrete—enough to fill 25,700
concrete trucks. If laid bumper-to-bumper, the
concrete trucks would stretch 146 miles.
- Plant construction requires moving more than
2,341,800 cubic yards of earth—enough to fill 18
Olympic swimming pools like the ones used in
the 2000 Sydney Games. In fact the amount of
WTP earthwork is 10 times the earthwork
completed for the University of Washington’s
Husky Stadium.
- Plant construction requires more than 4,281,000
feet of electrical cable; if laid end-to-end, would
stretch more than 811 miles—more than the
distance from Seattle, Wash, to San Francisco,
Calif.
- Plant construction requires more than 980,000
feet of piping; if laid end-to-end, it would stretch
more than 185 miles—more than the distance
from Seattle, Wash, to Portland, Ore.
- Plant construction requires more than 34,600
tons of structural steel, enough to build the
equivalent of three-and-a-half of Paris’ Eiffel
Tower (the Eiffel Tower is made of 9,547 tons of
wrought iron).