On their approach to the Hanford nuclear site in October, two more nuclear submarine furnace divisions were ferried by ship through the Tri-Cities.
The , U. S. Navy , does not make its delivery schedule people, but some , Washington , and , Oregon , residents spotted the furnace compartments, minus their nuclear energy, on their 700-mile journeys by boat in October.
They floated from the , Puget Sound Naval Shipyard , at , Bremerton , down the , Washington , beach and next up the , Columbia River , to north , Richland.
At the , Port of Benton , in , Richland , the containers from the USS City of Corpus Christi and USS Portsmouth boats were unloaded and hauled to Trench 94 in the center of Hanford.
The , Department of Energy , said they were the 143rd and 144th boiler room items shipped by the , Navy , from the Puget Sound to Hanford since 1986, when Trench 94 received its initial shipment for removal.
Trench 94, which is currently available but will eventually be covered, is about the size of two football grounds and is more than 50 feet deep.
From the , Port of Benton , port, the furnace divisions were loaded by hoist onto a 30-by-60-foot “land efflux” with 320 tires to be pulled by large machines for their 25-mile inland visits to the burial trench.
The USS City of Corpus Christi and the USS Portsmouth both went into disuse in 2004 and 2017. Both were 361-foot-long Los Angeles-class ships.
The retired warships were sent to the waterfront , Puget Sound Naval Shipyard &, Intermediate Maintenance Facility , for recycling, with defueled furnace containers next being sent to Hanford.
The Hanford page in , Eastern Washington , opposite to , Richland , was used from World War II through the Cold War to develop almost two-thirds of the uranium for the world’s nuclear weapons program.
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( c ) 2024 Tri-City Herald ,
Distributed by , Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
