The Hanford facility remains an environmental burden and an obsession for local residents decades after plutonium production ceased.
Hanford Campus along the Colorado River. Image: Wikimedia
The 1945 Nagasaki atomic bomb explosion originated from the Hanford facility in a desert in Washington state, which produced huge amounts of radioactive waste in the 20th century. Spread over an area of 1,550 square kilometers, the Hanford facility was founded in 1943 during the Manhattan Project for the sole purpose of producing plutonium on an industrial scale. Using nine reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium are produced by irradiating uranium fuel rods, according to IFL Science.
Materials produced at Hanford are responsible for some of the most destructive explosions ever created by humans. In the facility’s early days, plutonium was shipped from Hanford to the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where Manhattan Project scientists would use the material in nuclear weapons development. Part of the material was used to make the nuclear bomb used in the Trinity test, the world’s first nuclear bomb explosion, and “Fat Man”, the American bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
The facility, located in a remote area of Washington state’s Benton County, was chosen because of its abundant supply of cold water from the Columbia River, which helps cool the reactor. This location is also relatively remote, although some residents were asked to move to build the facility. In early 1943, about 1,500 local residents received letters from the US government asking them to leave their homes within 90 days.
From 1944 to 1989, the Hanford facility produced 74 tons of plutonium for the US nuclear weapons program. This created a lot of by-products and radioactive waste, including 212 million liters of waste stored in 177 large underground tanks made from armored concrete. Production ended in the late 1980s as the Cold War neared its end and a program was launched to clean up the facility, but it was difficult.
Over the years, it is estimated that the Department of Energy has discharged millions of gallons of wastewater directly into the land and the Columbia River. According to the New York Times, radioactive material released from the Hanford facility into the river has flowed into the Pacific Ocean more than 322 km downstream. Along the way, it contaminates drinking water supplies and is absorbed by fish, exposing thousands of people to potentially dangerous doses.
Besides wastewater, underground tanks also cause problems and tend to leak. In 2013, the governor of Washington state said tanks lose about 568 – 1,135 liters per year. Lost wastewater seeps into the surrounding soil and aquifer, spreading into the environment. Groundwater contamination occurred over a total area of 207 square kilometers in the 1980s, and groundwater in 155 square kilometers remains contaminated above federal standards. As a result, many places at the Hanford facility restrict access.
Radiation seriously affected the health of people in the area, even decades after the facility closed. Rates of cancer, infertility, thyroid and lymphatic disease increased among residents living near the Hanford facility. “Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, making it a problem that lasts generations. The cleanup process will not make the waste at Hanford disappear. Most will be there forever,” Dr. Shannon Cram, deputy Professor at the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.