Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was originally established in 1891 as a Naval Station and was designated the Navy Yard Puget Sound in 1901. Over the years the Navy has used the site to construct, repair, and modernize the ships of its fleet. The U.S. Navy began using the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to decommission and recycle their nuclear powered ships and submarines.

The U.S. Navy will choose to inactivate a vessel when cost of operation is too high, when the ships are no longer needed, or when a treaty is signed that limits the ballistic missile capacity. In the late 1970s, the Navy recognized that there was a large number of nuclear-powered submarines that soon would be decommissioned. There was a question of what should be done with the defueled reactor. The two options discussed were to either bury the reactor at an already existing site or to sink the entire defueled submarine in a deep area of the ocean. By 1984 the Navy had decided that the best choice was to dispose of the reactor compartments by land burial at Hanford. The first reactor compartment was shipped from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to the Hanford Site for disposal in 1986.

The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is the only location where the removal of a reactor compartment from a submarine is performed. This is done with torches, hand held saws, pipe cutters, and grinders. The reactor compartments are located in the middle of the submarine. It consists of the reactor vessel, the steam generators, pumps, valves and piping. The iron and metal alloys within the reactor vessel have become radioactive after years of reactor operations. The nuclear fuel from the reactor is removed as part of the deactivation process as well. Fluids are drained from the reactor and pipes are sealed. The fuel is shipped by rail through Washington and Oregon to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, near Idaho Falls, Idaho, where it is inspected and stored. The entire reactor compartment and some adjoining areas are then cut from the remainder of the submarine and steel plating is welded on each end to seal the compartment. It takes the Navy six to eight months to prepare each compartment for transport.

The reactor compartments that are being shipped are classified as low-level radioactive waste. There exteriors are not contaminated and there is no loose radioactivity or contaminated fluids. The barge is towed from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard using a large commercial ocean tug. The tow is accompanied by a second similar backup tug and a Navy or Coast Guard escort vessel. The route begins at the Shipyard and goes though Rich Passage, past Restoration Point, and northerly though Puget Sound. The barge will then move west through the Strait of Juan De Fuca, past Cape Flattery, before turning south and going along the Washington Coast. As the barge makes its way to the mouth of the Columbia River it will not enter the area near the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary know as the Area to Be Avoided. The barge will then go up the Columbia River following the regular shipping channel that is used for commercial cargo. The ocean tugs turn over the barge to river tugs on the lower Columbia. The river route passes through the navigation locks at the Bonneville, Dalles, John Day, and McCanry dams, until finally reaching the Port of Benton located in Richland, Washington. Before the barge docks at Port Benton, divers inspect the slip. The barge is placed in the slip and water is added to ground the barge firmly on the gravel bottom of the slip. Welds holding the reactor is place are cut and the compartment is jacked up and placed on four steel columns. A transport vehicle is then moved onto the barge and under the package. The package is attached to the transport vehicle using welded attachments. The transporter is driven off the barge and takes the package 26 miles to a burial trench at the Hanford Site's 218-E-12B burial ground in the 200 East Area. The package is moved into its final disposal position and lowered onto the concrete rail. It takes the barge about 5 days to get the reactor from the shipyard to the trench. Three of these days involve transit. The reactor compartments are placed in the 218-E-12B burial ground for indefinite storage, which is left uncovered to allow Russian satellites to check that American decommissioning efforts are valid. This trench is exclusively used for submarine reactors.

The Navy must comply with U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations when shipping the reactor compartments. radiation levels must meet DOT limits to protect workers involved with shipping, the public, and the environment. The Navy performs radiation surveys of each reactor compartment before it leaves for Hanford. The Washington Department of Health and the Oregon State Health Division survey some of the shipments as an independent verification.

After the first six submarine reactor compartment shipments were complete, the Navy discovered that sound dampening material used on some older submarines contained PCBs, which can cause cancer. The PCB contaminated material was removed from the six compartments already at Hanford. Any PCB contaminated material is now removed from the compartments before they leave the shipyard, however still present are residual amounts of PCBs that are widely distributed within electrical cables and components.

Since 1986 the U.S. Navy has disposed of 117 reactor compartments from deactivated nuclear submarines and cruisers at Hanford. The Navy was making between seven and ten shipments a year. Recently the amount has been reduced to only one or two shipments a year.

Accident at the Shipyard

On May 22, 1978 an accident occurred at the Puget Sound naval Shipyard. The USS Puffer's reactor had begun leaking large amounts of coolant. It was pouring out of a mistakenly opened value onto the concrete bed of Drydock 2. Workers were able to cut off the flow, but not before as much as 500 gallons of radioactive water had escaped from the Puffer's primary coolant system into the shipyard. Gutters of sand had blocked the spill from entering the inlet waters fifteen miles away from downtown Seattle.

Before clean up began, news of the spill was reported to local press. Reports differed as to the amount with some claiming 100, 150 or 500 gallons. One shipyard sources told the Bremerton Sun that coolant had spilled into the Puget Sound. The official statement from the Navy was "Last Tuesday there was a very minor incident involving the USS Puffer. About five gallons of slightly radioactive water leaked onto the dry-dock floor. The radioactivity of the water was low-level, the highest radiation levels from the spill being comparable to radiation levels near the surface of a radium dial wristwatch. No personnel were contaminated. None of the water entered the Sound."

Bill Clymer, who was the union steward of the shipyard's radiological control team observed the cleanup of Drydock 2, received a radiological survey of the area that reported that the coolant had permeated the concrete with cobalt 60. Cobalt 60 is a radioisotope which takes over five years to significantly decay. Radiation monitors gave readings far more hazardous than reported in the Navy's statement. Clymer also concluded that since the area affected was so large, the spill would have had to been around 500 gallons.

Cleanup of the area took months. Workers had to use jackhammers to blast away a fifteen-by-twenty foot section of the dry-dock. The concrete was packed into steel drums and shipped to Hanford. During clean up there was a work stoppage because the radiological control technician on duty demanded better safeguards to stop the radioactivity from spreading.

References

http://www.navsea.navy.mil/shipyards/puget/page/History.aspx

http://www.armscontrol.ru/subs/disposal/proe1210.htm#fn5

http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/subfact.shtml

http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/subfact.shtml

http://www.armscontrol.ru/subs/disposal/proe1210.htm#fn5

http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/subfact.shtml

http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/subfact.shtml

http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/HTrans.shtml

http://oc.itgo.com/kitsap/nuclear/clymer.htm