By Jill McNutt — Removing 699,275 cubic feet of legacy material from a 613,642‑square‑foot building is no easy feat. But helping to make the job more manageable is a mega shredder that can shred thousands of pounds of waste a day.

Y‑12 acquired the mega shredder in 2009 from DeNuke Services, which had operated the shredder on site for another Y‑12 project. Now Y‑12 is using the mega shredder for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act cleanup projects. At Alpha 5 (Building 9201‑5), remediation teams are packaging, removing, and recycling or disposing of legacy material left in the building.

“On the fourth floor, the material is composed primarily of containers that were used for production and are no longer needed,” said Rick Brooksbank, deputy project manager. “As of the end of December, we’ve removed more than 3,317 of the 5,430 containers, and through the end of January, approximately 50 percent of those have been shredded.”

Facilities, Infrastructure, and Services is handling the removal, bagging each container to control contamination then loading 40 to 80 of them into a Sealand container (which is roughly the size of a boxcar) for transfer to the shredder. During the first two months of operation, Construction, which is a division of Transformation and Projects, has been operating the shredder, working extended shifts and hours to eliminate a backlog of material.

 Old production containers from Alpha 5 are packaged in bags to control contamination before they are transferred and loaded into the shredder.

In preparation for receiving and shredding the materials, Construction had to perform a significant amount of site work and equipment modifications. The site was enlarged to accommodate staging of the Sealand containers coming from Alpha 5, and the area around the shredder was modified for a more efficient operation. Modifications were also made to the equipment to improve productivity.

The shredder is well suited for the Alpha 5 project because it limits hands-on work with waste containers. Additionally, this self-contained shredder has its own negative air system that captures any contaminants that might be generated during shredding as well as a liquid/solid separator that allows for compliant shipping when the shredded material is sent to the Nevada Test Site (NTS).

After shredding the contents of three or four Sealands, the material is consolidated into a single Sealand container for shipping to the NTS for disposal. Waste Management is ensuring that all material conforms to the NTS waste acceptance criteria (WAC).

“Utilizing a combination of radiological surveys, analytical data, process knowledge, non-destructive analysis, and visual inspections of the waste items ensures that we are meeting the NTS WAC,” said Tim Foust, lead waste management engineer. “This is accomplished through the cooperation of a number of Y‑12 departments that are working very well together to accomplish this task by the required deadline.”

Removing waste material from the fourth floor of Alpha 5 by March 31, 2010, is this project’s next significant milestone. Materials are expected to be removed from the remaining three floors by September 2011.