Hanford Site

Coordinates: 46°38′51″N 119°35′55″W / 46.64750°N 119.59861°W / 46.64750; -119.59861Cooling water retention basins at the F-ReactorUnderground tank farm with 12 of the site's 177 waste storage tanksInside one of the waste storage tanksInside the PUREX facilityView of the central plateau from Rattlesnake MountainThe government town of Richland in the early days of the siteHanford workers lining up for paychecksHanford scientists feeding radioactive food to sheepTesting a sheep's thyroid for radiationCold War-era billboard'Atomic Frontier Days' parade in RichlandThe Fast Flux Test Facility Coordinates: 46°38′51″N 119°35′55″W / 46.64750°N 119.59861°W / 46.64750; -119.59861 The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Project, Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works and Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project in Hanford, south-central Washington, the site was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. During the Cold War, the project expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the more than 60,000 weapons built for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Nuclear technology developed rapidly during this period, and Hanford scientists produced major technological achievements. Many early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate, and government documents have confirmed that Hanford's operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River. In 1989, the State of Washington (Dept. of Ecology), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the US Department of Energy (DOE) entered into the Tri-Party Agreement which sets targets, or milestones, for cleanup. EPA and Ecology share regulatory oversight based on CERCLA (Superfund) and RCRA. The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, and decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste stored within 177 storage tanks, an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, and areas of heavy Technetium-99 and uranium contaminated groundwater beneath three tank farms on the site as well as the potential for future groundwater contamination beneath currently contaminated soils. In 2011, DOE, the federal agency charged with overseeing the site, 'interim stabilized' 149 single-shell tanks by pumping nearly all of the liquid waste out into 28 newer double-shell tanks. Solids, known as salt cake and sludge, remained. DOE later found water intruding into at least 14 single-shell tanks and that one of them had been leaking about 640 US gallons (2,400 l; 530 imp gal) per year into the ground since about 2010. In 2012, DOE discovered a leak also from a double-shell tank caused by construction flaws and corrosion in the bottom, and that 12 double-shell tanks have similar construction flaws. Since then, the DOE changed to monitoring single-shell tanks monthly and double-shell tanks every three years, and also changed monitoring methods. In March 2014, the DOE announced further delays in the construction of the Waste Treatment Plant, which will affect the schedule for removing waste from the tanks. Intermittent discoveries of undocumented contamination have slowed the pace and raised the cost of cleanup. In 2007, the Hanford site represented 60% of high-level radioactive waste by volume managed by the US Department of Energy and 7-9% of all nuclear waste in the United States (the DOE manages 15% of nuclear waste in the US, with the remaining 85% being commercial spent nuclear fuel). Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup. Besides the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, and various centers for scientific research and development, such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the LIGO Hanford Observatory. On November 10, 2015, it was designated as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park alongside other sites in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km2)—roughly equivalent to half of the total area of Rhode Island—within Benton County, Washington. This land is closed to the general public. It is a desert environment receiving under 10 inches of annual precipitation, covered mostly by shrub-steppe vegetation. The Columbia River flows along the site for approximately 50 miles (80 km), forming its northern and eastern boundary. The original site was 670 square miles (1,740 km2) and included buffer areas across the river in Grant and Franklin counties. Some of this land has been returned to private use and is now covered with orchards, vineyards, and irrigated fields. In 2000, large portions of the site were turned over to the Hanford Reach National Monument. The site is divided by function into three main areas. The nuclear reactors were located along the river in an area designated as the 100 Area; the chemical separations complexes were located inland in the Central Plateau, designated as the 200 Area; and various support facilities were located in the southeast corner of the site, designated as the 300 Area. The site is bordered on the southeast by the Tri-Cities, a metropolitan area composed of Richland, Kennewick, Pasco, and smaller communities, and home to over 230,000 residents. Hanford is a primary economic base for these cities.