Summary:  The hauling of Hanford's orange rubble containers along Stevens Drive, through the nearby Wye barricade and onto the Hanford site continues to produce lots of 1-3Hz seismic noise at LHO on day shift and swing shift.  This circumstance might not change much during the remainder of 2014.  The swing shift noise might decrease in 2015.

History:  Hanford site activities that LHO feels the most are expansions of ERDF (the enormous rubble depository ~11 miles from LHO), the hauling of ~20-30 ton waste containers to ERDF and the return of empty containers out of ERDF back to the remediation locations.  Pit expansions only happen when an existing supercell (hole) becomes full every few years.  The excavation of a new hole takes a few months.  The hauling of containers through the nearby Wye barricade is continuous.  See  this elog entry for some S6 plots of truck traffic.

Current status of hauling activities:  On a typical day between Monday and Thursday, 200-300 container trucks will pass through the Wye barricade on Hanford's day shift.  300-400 trucks will pass through the barricade on swing shift.  The empty/full ratio for these totals usually lies within 30% of 50/50.  [NOTE:  These totals represent the highest possible values.  The actual totals might be lower because not all trucks in the total might travel on Stevens Drive.  Some might travel to other Hanford remediation areas on the far side of the site.  This is one of several possible uncertainties in the haul numbers that I've received].  There is occasional weekend activity, but it doesn't appear to be significant.

Operations schedules and interruptions: The trucks haul containers on both day and swing shift, but ERDF only operates the pit during day shift.  The baseline schedule for the pit is four ten-hour days, but the pit will operate and loads will travel on Fridays as needed to catch up from lost time.  The pit will shut down during high-wind episodes, but there's not a hard mph threshold for shutdown; wind direction matters.  Pit operations also might halt for unusual circumstances related to particular loads.  Although the pit might close in high winds, it's possible that loaded trucks could continue to travel since the containers are covered.  It appears from the load numbers I've received that reduced pit activity correlates with reduced travel activity.  These reductions are most evident on intermittent Fridays.

Future activity:  Day and swing hauling through the Wye barricade apparently will continue through the fall as crews continue to remove material from Hanford's 300 area north of PNNL and from the 618-10 area that's on the south side of Stevens between 300 and Energy Northwest.  Hauling projections in part appear to be based on funding projections, which tend to fluctuate.  Current circumstances suggest that the total number of loads in the winter will drop to a couple hundred per day, and it's possible that swing shift hauling could cease in 2015.  Long term:  The 618-10 site will remain active for several more years, and the 618-11 site near Energy Northwest's facility will ramp up and become active over the next couple of years.

Attached plots:  The PDF contains a set of recent 24-hour plots that start at 6:00 PM local time each day. These show the X and Z channels at EX in the 1-3Hz band.  The last two plots are Fridays.  9/19 seems to show that the trucks were traveling in groups.  8/15 shows a moderately busy day shift and a quiet swing shift.