In August 1999, a mothballed defueled reactor vessel from Portland General Electric’s Trojan Nuclear Power Station was disposed at US Ecology's Richland facility. The 1,000-ton vessel was disposed intact, minimizing radiation exposure to workers and reducing total waste transportation shipments from more than 50 to only one.  

 

Right: Two Tugboats position the barge with trailer into the slip at the Port of Benton.

Left: For transport, the reactor vessel was loaded at Ranier, Oregon, and barged up the Columbia River to the Port of Benton, Washington.

Left: the barge is stabilized in the slip and ready for prime movers to transport the vessel  to the Richland site.

Right: At US Ecology's  Richland site, the vessel's protective covering and impact limiter "donuts" are removed.

In the burial trench, the vessel and its trailer are backed onto a lifting device platform for final placement. It is home!

After removal of the lifting device and trailer, the vessel is positioned in a disposal "saddle" in a special trench 850-feet long by 150-feet wide by 45-feet deep. The vessel was capped with desert soils and six inches of river rock.

The Richland disposal site offers one of only two full service Class A, B and C low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities in the nation. This excellent desert site has successfully operated on the US Department of Energy’s Hanford Reservation since 1965. The facility also accepts exempt source and byproduct material, as well as naturally occurring and accelerator-produced radioactive materials ("NARM") from customers worldwide. The site offers more than 45 million cubic feet of unused disposal capacity sufficient to accept large quantities of waste well into the 21st century.

For further information and assistance, contact:

Mike Ault - Facility Manager
E-Mail: mault@americanecology.com
(509) 377-2411 • Fax (509) 377-2244
US Ecology Inc. • P.O. Box 638 • Richland, WA 99352

American Ecology Corporation • 805 W. Idaho St. Suite #200 • Boise, ID 83702
(800) 590-5220 • FAX (208) 331-7900 • E-mail: info@americanecology.com
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