Closing Hanford's Purex Plant: Three Years, $150 Million Later . . .

RICHLAND - It will take three years and cost about $150 million to close the largest remaining plutonium-production plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation, according to Westinghouse Hanford Co.

Chris Midgett, manager of the Plutonium Uranium Extraction plant, made the predictions during a news conference at the plant last week.

In December, former Energy Secretary James Watkins ordered the permanent shutdown of PUREX, which ceased operations three years ago. The cavernous building was the last of Hanford's huge plutonium-separation factories to operate.

Hanford officials had already determined that a restart was impractical, requiring about $1 billion in upgrades and seven years of construction work.

The death warrant issued by Watkins was a relief - "We were really in a sort of limbo for two years," Midgett said.

PUREX shut down in March 1990 for what was supposed to be a year's worth of upgrades. Plans called for processing 2,100 metric tons of remaining spent fuel from Hanford's N Reactor.

The Energy Department didn't need more plutonium for nuclear weapons. But restarting the plant for four years was considered the best way to get rid of nuclear fuel orphaned by the end of the Cold War.

Until the official word came to permanently close the plant, Westinghouse was required to keep it in condition that would allow restart if national policy shifted.

It cost about $45 million a year to maintain the plant at that

level. Standby status also kept PUREX employees from starting to prepare the site for permanent shutdown, Midgett said.

It will take most of 1993 to draft a shutdown plan and win approval for the closure.

The massive structure - 100 feet tall and 1,005 feet long - still contains about 300,000 gallons of acids and organic solutions, as well as residual radioactive contamination and other hazardous materials.

The mess includes highly radioactive spent fuel rods. Direct exposure to them would cause death within a few minutes, Midgett said.

Cleanup plans would call for PUREX to dissolve the irradiated nuclear-fuel rods and extract the plutonium and uranium.

The goal is get PUREX clean enough to evacuate and lock the doors. The plant was one of the largest generators of nuclear waste at Hanford.

"We're calling it a walk-away scenario," Midgett said.

The job is expected to take three years at an annual cost of $50 million to $60 million, he said.

None of the roughly 350 PUREX workers will lose their jobs, he added. Employment is expected to go up slightly once work begins. As the need for them diminishes, workers will move to other cleanup projects at Hanford.