PUREX facility hazards assessment

This report documents the hazards assessment for the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) located on the US Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site. Operation of PUREX is the responsibility of Westinghouse Hanford Company (WHC). This hazards assessment was conducted to provide the emergency planning technical basis for PUREX. DOE Order 5500.3A requires an emergency planning hazards assessment for each facility that has the potential to reach or exceed the lowest level emergency classification. In October of 1990, WHC was directed to place PUREX in standby. In December of 1992 the DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Restoration and Waste Management authorized the termination of PUREX and directed DOE-RL to proceed with shutdown planning and terminal clean out activities. Prior to this action, its mission was to reprocess irradiated fuels for the recovery of uranium and plutonium. The present mission is to establish a passively safe and environmentally secure configuration at the PUREX facility and to preserve that condition for 10 years. The ten year time frame represents the typical duration expended to define, authorize and initiate follow-on decommissioning and decontamination activities