Workers at Nuclear Plant 'Take Cover' After Tunnel Collapse
Workers at Nuclear Plant 'Take Cover' After Tunnel Collapse, Some 200 workers at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state were ordered to "take cover" Tuesday after a 20-foot section of tunnel containing "contaminated materials" collapsed, the U.S. Department of Energy reported.
The alert was declared at 8:26 a.m. local time after the cave-in covered "railroad tunnels near a former chemical processing plant," the feds said.
All workers at the plant, which sits along the Columbia River, were ordered inside and access to the affected area is now "restricted to protect employees."
"There are no reports of injuries, no reports of radiological release," said Destry Henderson, deputy news manager for the Hanford Joint Information Center. "I would underscore this is confined to a small area of the Hanford site."
Nor is there any danger to communities outside the sprawling 580 square-mile site, officials said.
"I can confirm we are investigating a small area of soil that had sunken," Henderson added. "This soil covers a tunnel used to access a former chemical processing facility."
The tunnel is located next to the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility, also known as PUREX, which is located in the center of the Hanford Site in an area known as the 200 East Area.
Citing a source, the Seattle NBC affiliate reported road crews working nearby might have created enough vibration to cause the collapse.
Hanford was dubbed the "Most Toxic Place in America" last year in an NBC News expose.
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| Workers at Nuclear Plant 'Take Cover' After Tunnel Collapse |
Plutonium was produced at Hanford for America's nuclear arsenal until 1980. Now it's run by the Department of Energy and its contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, and is in the midst of a massive $110 billion cleanup of 56 million gallons of chemical and nuclear waste that is stored in 177 underground tanks.
The job, which began in 1989, is expected to take at least 50 years to complete.
