There continues to be no signs of radiological release from the site of an underground tunnel collapse at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a Hanford spokesperson said Wednesday. The office has completed cleanup in many sites and says it is making "substantial progress in almost every area of nuclear waste cleanup".
Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said worker safety must be the priority.
About six Hanford employees discovered the tunnel collapse Tuesday morning and an emergency was declared about 8:30 a.m.
Lawyers for the Energy Department have said no evidence has been provided showing workers have been harmed by vapors.
The Energy Department was warned in a 2015 report it commissioned that both tunnels were vulnerable to a collapse from an quake or deterioration of tunnel building materials caused by intense radiation, the report said.
The cleanup there has cost $19 billion to date and is not expected to be finished until 2060, at an additional cost of $100 billion.
Several thousand workers were ordered to take shelter, a lot of them for several hours, during the incident.
The tunnel was built to house rail cars that were filled with contaminated equipment and moved into the tunnels during the Cold War, the center said. "But while we're doing that we have to keep our eye on the ball to have safety for our employees who work there and - if you have collapsing tunnels that could expose workers, this is a very dramatic concern that we have".
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The Energy Department also confirmed that no action was required for the almost 300,000 residents in the surrounding Benton and Franklin communities, according to AP. "While there have been no reports of injuries and no indication of a release of contamination, as chairman of the committee I have asked DOE to provide a bipartisan briefing for members and staff of the situation".
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a frequent Hanford critic, said the cave-in shows that the temporary solutions the Energy Department has used for decades are starting to fail. Perry said Wednesday that the tunnel obviously deteriorated and the question that needs to be answered now is why that was allowed to happen. It was used to extract plutonium for bombs from irradiated rods.
As part of the huge, ongoing cleanup, rail cars full of radioactive waste were often driven into tunnels and buried.
There are calls from a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for an Energy Department brief the panel on the cause the collapse.
"This week's incident is a reminder that the men and women who work for the Department of Energy do incredible work, but that work does not come without risk", said the statement.
The committee oversees the departments management of the cleanup efforts.
For decades, Hanford made plutonium for nuclear weapons and is now the nation's largest depository of radioactive defense waste, with about 56 million gallons of waste, most of it in 177 underground tanks, according to AP.
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