ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUES: The Hanford Nuclear Problem

The Hanford Nuclear Problem

By Josh Davison

As you all may know, the Hanford Nuclear site was established in eastern Washington along the Columbia River as part of the Manhattan Project. It is home to the B-Reactor, the first full scale plutonium reactor in the world and was created for the purpose of building nuclear bombs. It was very successful. A lot of the bombs tested at the Trinity Site, where the Manhattan Project tested its bombs and an area that is now close to many Native American reservations, were created at Hanford. However, it is most famous for created the plutonium for the bomb “Fat Man” that devastated the Japanese city of Nagasaki and marked the end of WWII.

After the war ended the Hanford site expanded to nine large nuclear reactors and five plutonium processing complexes. During the Cold War, these reactors and this site were responsible for the plutonium in some 60,000 nuclear weapons. As you can imagine this large expansion, close proximity to the town of Hanford, the Tri-City area, and the Columbia River has caused extreme environmental degradation coupled with health concerns.

Numerous environmental hazards have plagued the Hanford site. Some of these problems have been covered up by the government in the past and some other problems continue to this very day. From 1941 to 1971 the cover-up entailed the pumping of the Columbia River into the reactors to cool them, subsequently storing that water for a short period of six hours to be treated, and then releasing it back into the Columbia River. Anyone with half a brain knows the half live of plutonium to be thousands of years so this could not have gotten rid of all the harmful radiation being pumping back into the Columbia. This has hurt fish and high radiation levels have been found up and down the Washington and Oregon coast around the Columbia’s mouth because of this. Many Native Americans cannot fish there anymore for fear of contracting radiation poisoning.

The plutonium separation process also results in isotopes being let into the air. As a result of this, the areas around Hanford and the Tri-Cities have had potentially harmful levels of radionuclides in the air possibly causing things like cancer. Radiation levels have been found to be high in the southeastern Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and even British Columbia area because of the Hanford problem. Having been a resident of the area for over 20 years the resounding joke is that the deer along the Hanford site “glow green” as a result of eating contaminated grass and breathing the air. Once you think about it, it is not as funny as it sounds because this is going into people as well.

Around 53 million gallons of toxic waste are stored underground at Hanford as well. Almost as soon as this waste was stored it began to leak. There are 177 tanks about 12 miles from the river and to date about 70 of the tanks have had leaking problems resulting in 1 million gallons of toxic waste leaching into the soil. It is estimated that it takes 7 to 20 years for this waste to reach the groundwater and the river. It not only hurts us now, but it hurts future generations as well.

What should we do about it? It is an expensive, but necessary problem to fix. I would love feedback…