Workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation have removed the last of the reactor fuel from the deactivated Fast Flux Test Facility and shipped it to Idaho almost a year ahead of a legal deadline.

The research reactor is being shutdown to allow it to be put into a long-term surveillance and maintenance mode at minimum cost by August 2009.

The Department of Energy was required under the Tri-Party Agreement to have the last of the fuel removed from the reactor by next March. That included 375 fuel assemblies transported to central Hanford earlier for storage - they will be considered for disposal at the nuclear waste depository atYucca Mountain, Nevada. In addition, the Hanford facility had 11 sodium-bonded fuel assemblies that were shipped to the Idaho National Laboratory to have uranium extracted for possible reuse by commercial nuclear power plants.

The first of 11 shipments to Idaho was made in October, with contractor Fluor Hanford receiving word the last shipment arrived May 1.

(Tri-City Herald)