Two contaminated facilities described as "high risk" have been removed from a California weapons-development lab to make way for a parking lot, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced recently.
A building that housed a uranium-vaporizing electron beam was "demolished to a slab," and a neutron-producing reactor was successfully removed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the DOE reported May 10.
LLNL, in Livermore, Calif., is a weapons research and development facility located on a small, one-square-mile site. Congress has instructed the DOE's Office of Environmental Management (EM) to tear down and remove "excess" structures to make room for new facilities, according to the DOE. EM, LLNL and the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) partnered in the demolition and removal project, the DOE reports.
"With its small footprint, the lab must maximize all available space by demolishing buildings that have outlived their purpose," the DOE stated in the announcement. "This includes Buildings B175 and B280, two high-risk excess contaminated facilities onsite."
The lab's Uranium Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation program was conducted in Building B175. The program "used an electron beam to vaporize uranium to test ion extraction and material handling subsystems," the DOE reports. More than 30 shipping containers of building debris were removed to an out-of-state facility; part of the debris is contaminated with low-level and mixed hazardous waste, according to the DOE.
“The B175 effort required significant internal integration within LLNL to successfully demolish the building," Kevin Bazzell, EM federal project director, said in the report, "and help refine processes which will be used for future demolition activities,” said Kevin Bazzell.
Building 280 contained the Livermore Pool Type Reactor, described as "a neutron-producing machine" initially used for research and to measure and calibrate instruments and later to study radiation damage, among other projects, the DOE reports.
“The reactor removal required a colossal amount of teamwork and integration among EM, USACE and LLNL to demolish it," Bazzell said in the announcement. "Coordinating the teams, their schedules and their individual duties was challenging, but everyone worked together to get it done."
Once demolition and removal of the Building 280 structure is completed, the site will be used for a parking structure, according to the DOE.
"The demolition and cleanup at two of the higher risk buildings onsite meant constant communication of schedules, safety protocols and work execution," Bazzell said in the report. "I’m proud of how our teams collaborated to get the job done.”
