A version of this article first ran in the December 2010 edition of the Oregon Insider, a private monthly digest of environmental management and regulatory news. With Hanford in the news this month for a newly reported single-shell container leak, it seems appropriate to publish an updated version of the story.
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On Friday, February 15, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced the first confirmed leak of high-level radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear site since 2005. The site of America's first nuclear reactor and one of the largest nuclear waste sites in the world has drawn relatively little of the renewed press scrutiny other nuclear facilities have faced in the wake of Japan's Fukushima meltdown. On the other hand, you might say that Hanford is always in the back of the Pacific Northwest’s mind. The name Hanford has become synonymous with the atomic age and radiation pollution. But how much does the region know about the intricacies of the massive and massively expensive ongoing cleanup effort?
Covering hundreds of square miles of sage-brush filled
backcountry on the Columbia River in southern Washington,
Hanford is the most contaminated
site in the Western Hemisphere. Known by various names,
including the Hanford Engineering Works, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and
finally the Hanford site, the
complex comprises multiple nuclear reactors, processing plants, laboratories
and associated buildings and waste dumps. Because of the nature of nuclear
research and production undertaken during Hanford’s
four decades of operation, the site’s contamination presents a hugely
complex long term problem. While progress has been made, the $2
billion-per-year cleanup is behind schedule and over budget.
