[FONT=Verdana]Built in the 1940's, the K Basins were never designed for long-term storage of nuclear fuel. With roughly one million gallons of highly contaminated water still inside, there's potential for leaks into the groundwater. So to prevent a human health disaster, Fluor Hanford is preparing for D and D...Dewatering and Demolition.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"We're preparing to remove the water from the basin and backfill it with a sand material which will prepare it for the next phase of demolition, which is the superstructure," says Chris Lucas, K East Basin Closure Director. Everything you see around me."[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Workers used "pull tools" ranging from 10 to 24 feet in length to vacuum up radioactive sludge and debris. The tools were then inserted into slots only one-and-a-half inches wide.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]Hanford[/FONT][FONT=Verdana] operators needed to see what was underneath the murky water. They tested dozens of camera systems, but what eventually hooked them was a fish camera.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"All the video that we've taken underwater and the hundreds and thousands of hours of underwater work, we used using a simple, very inexpensive camera that every fisherman might use while their out fishing on the Columbia River," adds Jeffrey Broussard, K East Basin Facility Manager."[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]And with the K Basin removed, (Department of Energy) DOE can focus on the Columbia River.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]"We're very excited about that because once we get that down, we can get to the soil and that's where we want to remediate," says Ellen Dagan, DOE Project Manager.[/FONT]