Spent fuel stored in fuel pools at Hanford's K-East Basin. Courtesy US Government/Hanford. The US Department of Energy has given permission for Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPC Co) to proceed with a major cleanup contract at the Hanford Site near Richland, Washington.

The contract, valued at $10bn over 10 years, is for end state closure of facilities, waste burial sites, and groundwater remediation in the river corridor of the Hanford Reservation along the Columbia River.

The work will also include decommissioning and dismantlement of several legacy facilities on the Central Plateau of the Hanford Reservation. CPC Co will manage waste disposition activities for the on-site disposal facility as well as offsite disposal operations.

CPC Co is an Amentum-led joint venture with Atkins Nuclear Secured, a member of the SNC-Lavalin Group, and Fluor.

For more than 40 years, reactors located at Hanford produced plutonium for the US defence programme. Beginning in 1943, the site was used to produce plutonium for the atomic bomb that brought an end to World War II.

All of the facilities and structures that were associated with Hanford’s defence mission must be deactivated, decommissioned, decontaminated, and demolished.