Hanford Site
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the
During the
Many early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate, resulting in the release of significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River, resulting in higher rates of cancer in the surrounding area. The Hanford Site became the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup. A citizen-led Hanford Advisory Board provides recommendations from community stakeholders, including local and state governments, regional environmental organizations, business interests, and Native American tribes. Cleanup activity was still ongoing in 2023, with over 10,000 workers employed on cleanup activities.
Hanford 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, the Fast Flux Test Facility and the LIGO Hanford Observatory. In 2015, it was designated as part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Tourists can visit the site and B Reactor.
Geography
The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km2) – roughly equivalent to half the total area of
The original site was 670 square miles (1,740 km2) and included buffer areas across the river in Grant and Franklin counties.[5] Some of this land has been returned to private use and is now covered with orchards, vineyards, and irrigated fields.[6] 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 nearly 300,000 residents. Hanford is a primary economic base for these cities.[7] In 2000 large portions of the original site were turned over to the Hanford Reach National Monument.[8] The remainder was 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 support facilities were located in the southeast corner of the site, designated as the 300 Area.[9]
Climate
Climate data for Hanford Site, Washington | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
Record high °F (°C) | 72 (22) |
72 (22) |
83 (28) |
94 (34) |
104 (40) |
120 (49) |
113 (45) |
113 (45) |
106 (41) |
93 (34) |
76 (24) |
71 (22) |
120 (49) |
Mean daily maximum °F (°C) | 40.0 (4.4) |
47.9 (8.8) |
58.1 (14.5) |
66.9 (19.4) |
76.9 (24.9) |
84.0 (28.9) |
93.6 (34.2) |
92.2 (33.4) |
81.8 (27.7) |
65.9 (18.8) |
49.2 (9.6) |
39.8 (4.3) |
66.4 (19.1) |
Mean daily minimum °F (°C) | 26.5 (−3.1) |
28.9 (−1.7) |
34.5 (1.4) |
40.5 (4.7) |
48.9 (9.4) |
55.6 (13.1) |
62.5 (16.9) |
60.8 (16.0) |
52.2 (11.2) |
41.2 (5.1) |
31.6 (−0.2) |
26.0 (−3.3) |
42.4 (5.8) |
Record low °F (°C) | −22 (−30) |
−23 (−31) |
5 (−15) |
21 (−6) |
28 (−2) |
37 (3) |
39 (4) |
41 (5) |
30 (−1) |
7 (−14) |
−13 (−25) |
−14 (−26) |
−23 (−31) |
Average precipitation inches (mm) | 0.94 (24) |
0.64 (16) |
0.51 (13) |
0.47 (12) |
0.55 (14) |
0.53 (13) |
0.18 (4.6) |
0.25 (6.4) |
0.30 (7.6) |
0.57 (14) |
0.85 (22) |
0.99 (25) |
6.76 (172) |
Source: Averages for 1991–2020, Extremes for 1945–2021[10][11][12] |
Hanford is the site of Washington state's highest recorded temperature of 120 °F (48.9 °C), reached on June 29, 2021.[12]
Early history
The confluence of the
In 1855,
After gold was discovered in
Manhattan Project
Contractor selection
During
In September 1942,
To avoid being labeled as
Site selection
Carpenter expressed reservations about building the reactors at
The ideal site was described by eight criteria:
- A clean and abundant water supply (at least 25,000 US gallons per minute (1,600 L/s))
- A large electric power supply (about 100,000 kW)
- A "hazardous manufacturing area" of at least 12 by 16 miles (19 by 26 km)
- Space for laboratory facilities at least 8 miles (13 km) from the nearest reactor or separations plant
- The employees' village no less than 10 miles (16 km) upwind of the plant
- No towns of more than a thousand people closer than 20 miles (32 km) from the hazardous rectangle
- No main highway, railway, or employee village closer than 10 miles (16 km) from the hazardous rectangle
- Ground that could bear heavy loads[26]
The most important of these criteria was the availability of electric power. The needs of war industries had created power shortages in many parts of the country, and use of the
Land acquisition
The
Most of the land (some 88 percent) was sagebrush, where eighteen to twenty thousand sheep grazed. About eleven percent was farmland, although not all was under cultivation. Farmers felt that they should be compensated for the value of the crops they had planted as well as for the land itself.
The harvest in the spring and summer of 1943 was exceptionally good, and high crop prices due to the war greatly increased land values. Litigation was needed to resolve disputes over the compensation due to the sellers.[39][40] Discontent over the acquisition was apparent in letters sent from Hanford Site residents to the War and Justice Departments, and the Truman Committee began making inquiries. Stimson met with chairman of the committee, Senator Harry S. Truman, who agreed to remove the Hanford Site from the committee's investigations on the grounds of national security. Trial juries were sympathetic to the claims of the landowners and the payments awarded were well in excess of the government appraisals.[43] When the Manhattan Project ended on December 31, 1946, there were still 237 tracts remaining to be settled.[44]
About 1,500 residents of Hanford, White Bluffs, and nearby settlements were relocated, as well as the Wanapum people, Confederated Tribes and Bands of the
Native Americans were accustomed to fishing in the Columbia River near White Bluffs for two or three weeks in October. The fish they caught were dried and provided food for the winter. The Natives rejected offers of an annual cash payment, and a deal was struck allowing the chief and his two assistants to issue passes to fish at the site. This authority was later revoked for security reasons. Matthias gave assurances that Native American graves would be treated with respect, but it would be fifteen years before the Wanapum people were allowed access to mark the cemeteries. In 1997, the elders were permitted to bring children and young adults onto the site once a year to learn about their sacred sites.[47]
Construction workforce
DuPont advertised for workers in newspapers for an unspecified "war construction project" in southeastern Washington, offering an "attractive scale of wages" and living facilities.[48] Normally for a development in such an isolated area, employees would be accommodated on site, but in this case for security and safety reasons it was desirable to locate them at least 10 miles (16 km) away. Even the construction workforce could not be housed on site, because some plant operations would have to be carried out during start-up testing. The Army and DuPont engineers decided to create two communities: a temporary constructions camp and a more substantial operating village. Construction was expedited by locating them on the sites of existing villages to take advantage of the buildings, roads and utility infrastructure already in place. They established the construction camp on the site of the village of Hanford, and the operating village on that of Richland.[49]
The construction workforce peaked at 45,096 on June 21, 1944.[50] About thirteen percent were women, and non-whites made up 16.45 percent. African-Americans lived in segregated quarters, had their own messes and recreation areas,[51] and were paid less than white workers.[52] Three types of accommodation were provided at Hanford: barracks, hutments and trailer parking. The first workers to arrive lived in tents while they erected the first barracks. Barracks construction commenced on April 6, 1943, and eventually 195 barracks were erected: 110 for white men, 21 for black men, 57 for white women and seven for black women. Hutments were prefabricated plywood and Celotex dwellings capable of accommodating ten to twenty workers each. Between them, the barracks and hutments held 39,050 workers. Many workers had their own trailers, taking their families with them from one wartime construction job to the next. Seven trailer camps were established, and at the peak of construction work 12,008 people were living in them.[53][54]
DuPont put the contract for building the village of Richland out to tender, and the contract was awarded to the lowest bidder, G. Albin Pehrson, on March 16, 1943. Pehrson produced a series of standard house designs based on the Cape Cod and ranch-style house design fashions of the day.[55] Pehrson accepted the need for speed and efficiency, but his vision of a model late-20th-century community differed from the austere concept of Groves. Pehrson ultimately had his way on most issues, because DuPont was his contractor, not the Army.[55] The resulting compromise would handicap Richland for many years with inadequate sidewalks, stores and shops, no civic center, and roads that were too narrow. Unlike Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, Richland was not surrounded by a high wire fence, thus Matthias asked DuPont to ensure that it was kept neat and tidy.[56]
Construction
Construction of the nuclear facilities proceeded rapidly. Before the end of the war in August 1945, the HEW built 554 buildings at Hanford, including three nuclear reactors (105‑B, 105‑D, and 105‑F) and three plutonium processing plants (221‑T, 221‑B, and 221‑U).[31] The project required 386 miles (621 km) of roads, 158 miles (254 km) of railway, and four electrical substations. The HEW used 780,000 cubic yards (600,000 m3) of concrete and 40,000 short tons (36,000 t) of structural steel.[57]
Construction on B Reactor commenced in August 1943 and was completed on September 13, 1944. The reactor went
Production process
Uranium arrived at the Hanford Engineer Works in the form of
Irradiated fuel slugs were transported by rail on a special railroad car operated by remote control to huge remotely-operated chemical separation plants about 10 miles (16 km) away.
Items were moved about with a 60-foot (18 m) long overhead crane. Once they began processing irradiated slugs, the machinery became so radioactive that it would be unsafe for humans ever to come in contact with it, so the engineers devised methods to allow for the replacement of components via remote control.[69] Periscopes and closed-circuit television gave the operator a view of the process. They assembled the equipment by remote control as if the area was already radioactive.[69] To receive the radioactive wastes from the chemical separations process, there were "tank farms" consisting of 64 single-shell underground waste tanks.[70]
The first batch of plutonium was refined in the 221‑T plant from December 26, 1944, to February 2, 1945, and delivered to the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico on February 5, 1945.[71] Two identical reactors, D Reactor and F Reactor, came online on December 5, 1944, and February 15, 1945, respectively, and all three reactors were running at full power (250 megawatts) by March 8, 1945.[72] By April kilogram-quantity shipments of plutonium were headed to Los Alamos. Road convoys replaced the trains in May, and in late July shipments began being dispatched by air from the airport at Hanford.[73]
Production activities
Although the reactors could be shut down in two-and-a-half seconds, they would still generate heat due to the decay of fission products. It was therefore vital that the flow of water should not cease.[62][63] If the power failed, the steam pumps would automatically cut in and continue to deliver water at full capacity for long enough to allow an orderly shutdown.[74] This occurred on March 10, 1945, when a Japanese balloon bomb struck a high-tension line between Grand Coulee and Bonneville. This caused an electrical surge in the lines to the reactors. A scram was automatically initiated and the safety devices shut the reactors down. The bomb failed to explode and the transmission line was not badly damaged.[75][76] The Hanford Engineer Works was the only U.S. nuclear facility to come under enemy attack.[77]
Hanford provided the plutonium for the bomb used in the 1945
Matthias was succeeded as area engineer by Colonel Frederick J. Clarke in January 1946.[82][83] DuPont would soon be gone too. Carpenter asked to be released from the contract.[84][85] Groves informed Robert P. Patterson, who had succeeded Stimson as Secretary of War on September 21, 1945,[86] Groves's choice of replacement was General Electric (GE),[87] which took over operations at Hanford on September 1, 1946, and accepted a formal control on September 30.[84][85] On December 31, 1946, the Manhattan Project ended and control of the Hanford Site passed to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).[88] The total cost of the Hanford Engineer Works up to that time was $348,101,240 (equivalent to $5,438,933,368 in 2023).[89]
Cold War
Production problems
GE inherited serious problems. Running the reactors continuously at full power had resulted in the
The other problem was that the bismuth phosphate process used to separate the plutonium left the uranium in an unrecoverable state. The Metallurgical Laboratory had researched a promising new
Meanwhile, the waste-settling tanks filled up with
During 1947, tensions with the Soviet Union escalated as the Cold War set in.[98] Clarke was succeeded by Carleton Shugg on September 2.[99] Within days of arrival he demanded overtime be used to speed up construction work then in progress.[100] The size of the nuclear stockpile was limited by plutonium production. There was enough for thirteen bombs at the end of 1947. Walter J. Williams, the AEC's director of production,[101] worked with GE engineers to produce plans for three replacement reactors (called BR, DR and FR). To save time and money, they would be built adjacent to the existing reactors, where they would be able to use their cooling water and separation facilities. Two more reactors would then be built on new sites.[102][103]
While this was being considered by the AEC, GE experimented with annealing, and found that if the reactors were run at 299 °C (570 °F) and then slowly cooled, the graphite's crystalline structure could be restored.[104] The reactors could be run at higher temperatures by increasing the power level. Some helium in the atmosphere surrounding the reactors was replaced with carbon dioxide, which conducted heat less efficiently. This allowed more heat to build up in the graphite.[105] To reduce the incidence of cans jamming, their size was reduced from 8 to 4 inches (20 to 10 cm). More plutonium was produced by keeping the fuel elements in the reactor longer. Instead of pushing the entire tube out, half of it was, allowing elements to spend time in parts of the reactor where the neutron flux was less dense.[106] The old reactors could now be run much longer. In December, the AEC approved a scaled-back construction plan, with only one replacement reactor, at site D (called DR), and one reactor at a new site (called H).[107] The new reactors used the same designs as the wartime ones, although they had more pure graphite to allow them to be run at higher power levels, and smaller graphite blocks surrounding the process tubes to restrict expansion.[108]
Growth of Richland
The population of Richland had already begun to increase again. In 1946 the Hanford Site had 4,479 operating employees and 141 construction workers. Two years later this had increased to 8,628 operating employees and 14,671 construction workers. Richland grew from 14,000 people in 1947 to 22,000 in 1950. To house the construction workers, a new construction camp was established called North Richland, which had a peak population of 13,000 in 1948. Many operating employees and construction workers also lived in Kennewick and Pasco.[109] Shugg arranged for barracks to be brought by barge down the Columbia River from the old Naval Air Station Pasco.[107] About 3,850 houses remained from the war; these were augmented by 800 houses and 64 apartments in 1947, and another 1,000 houses and apartments in 1948. Although the population stabilized, a housing shortage persisted into the 1950s. GE closed down the last of the dormitories in 1958.[110] Richland had a newspaper, the Richland Villager, and every resident received a free copy. Commercial concession holders were pressured to buy adverting space. The villagers paid low rents for their houses, and Village Services was available to help with unpacking, laying carpets or babysitting.[111]
The adult population of Richland had an average education of 12.5 years, and 40 percent of the men had attended college, compared with 22 percent in the state of Washington as a whole, and the median annual family income in 1959 was $8,368 (equivalent to $87,463 in 2023) compared with $6,225 (equivalent to $65,064 in 2023). In 1950 26 percent of American families had an annual income of less than the
There were few senior citizens in Richland – in 1947 the AEC still required retirees to give up their homes – but the birth rate in 1948 was 34 per 1,000, well above the national average of 20 per 1,000. This tapered off during the 1950s, but there remained a larger than usual number of school-age children.[113] There were only seven black people in Richland in 1950; this increased to 189 by 1960, when they accounted for 1.3 percent of the population. Only two black people worked for the AEC at the Hanford Site in 1951, less than a dozen were employed by GE, and about 250 by the construction contractors. The use of eating and recreational facilities by black people was discouraged, but not prohibited. Black people were even less welcome in Kennewick; there were only four living there in 1950 and five in 1960.[112] Kennewick was a sundown town where there was a curfew for black people. They congregated in Pasco, where 1,213 black people lived in a 5-acre (2.0 ha) ghetto on the town's eastern fringe. They had no sewerage or running water in 1948, because the town's leaders felt that the black community should provide the $5,000 (equivalent to $63,407 in 2023) to pay for it. Black residents also did not qualify for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans.[115]
Soon after taking over from the Army, the AEC had contemplated the future of the communities of Richland, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. The commissioners were eager to divest the AEC of the burden of their management. In 1947, AEC general manager
The first step was taken on October 1, 1953, when the AEC increased the rents in Richland by 25% to bring them into line with those in neighboring communities. In 1955, the town voted on disposal and incorporation; both measures were overwhelmingly defeated.[121] Nonetheless, that year Congress passed Public Law 221, which provided for the transfer of government property in Richland to the townsfolk. Thousands of people attended protest rallies and sent angry letters and petitions to Congress. Congressional hearings were held, and prices set by the FHA were reduced. People who had been dispossessed by the acquisition process during the war petitioned to be allowed to buy their property back, but they were ignored. By July 1958, 4,200 homes had been sold. After receiving assurances that the AEC would continue to subsidize schools and municipal services through the 1960s, the citizens of Richland voted for incorporation, and the town became self-governing on December 12, 1958.[122] In 1960 Richland received an All-America City Award.[123]
Camp Hanford
During the war the Hanford Site was patrolled by a Military Police detachment which, as of June 1945, had forty soldiers. In April 1947, they were replaced by GE security guards, who were issued M8 Greyhound armored cars. The Army was concerned that U.S. plutonium production was centered at one vulnerable site. In March 1950 the 5th Anti-aircraft Artillery Group arrived to provide air defenses, and established its headquarters in North Richland. The group consisted of four battalions, the 83rd, 501st, 518th, and 519th Anti-aircraft Artillery Battalions, each of which had four batteries of 120 mm anti-aircraft guns. Each battery had four guns, which were deployed in sandbagged revetments on a 20-acre (8.1 ha) site with wooden, prefabricated metal and containing barracks, latrines, mess halls, motor pools, radars and administrative facilities.[124][125]
The military base was designated "Camp Hanford" in 1951. The following year the guns were augmented by
Early expansion
Cold War tensions escalated in April 1948 with the
Shaw was succeeded by James E. Travis in June 1955, and he remained the site manager until June 1965.[128] It was also possible to improve productivity. Zirconium was added to the cans to stabilize them under high exposures, and tests confirmed that they could withstand three times the exposure used in 1946 without rupture. In March 1950, GE was authorized to run the reactors at 305 MW instead of 250. This cut the use of raw materials by half, and yielded forty percent more plutonium per operating dollar.[129]
The Soviet Union detonated its
On February 25, 1952, Truman authorized two more reactors at the Hanford Site. These were called K West and K East, and were sited at Coyote Rapids between the B and D areas. They were known as "Jumbo" reactors for their much larger size. They still used the same graphite-moderator technology, but had improvements to allow them to operate at 1,800 MW. Each used 2,800 short tons (2,500 t) of graphite, over a thousand tons more than the three wartime reactors, and had concrete shields instead of steel and masonite. They had more feed tubes and reduced spacing between them. Improvements in water-pump design allowed them to have eighteen pumps instead of the fifty in the wartime reactors, but were capable of pumping 125,000 US gallons per minute (7,900 L/s). As with the other reactors, the cooling water was collected in ponds, allowed to cool, and then tipped back into the river. An innovation was that heat from the cooling water was used to heat the work places. Each Jumbo reactor required about 300 operators to run it, compared with 400 for H Reactor. This represented a saving of a million dollars a year (equivalent to $9 million in 2023).[134][135] Although capable of being run at up to 4,400 MW, the AEC imposed an administrative limit of 4,000 MW on them.[136] Since plutonium‑239 has a half-life of 24,100 years, AEC chairman Gordon Dean calculated that sufficient plutonium would be produced by the mid-1960s. With this in mind, the reactors were designed with a life of twenty years.[137]
Separation facilities
In addition to the new reactors there were also new separation facilities. The AEC had long been dissatisfied with the wasteful bismuth phosphate separation process. GE conducted research into an alternative,
The U Plant was modified to use the REDOX process to recover uranium from the wastes left over from the bismuth phosphate process,[144] but with a different solvent, tributyl phosphate. Due to the plant's layout, it could not use the tall columns and gravity flow that characterized the REDOX plant, so pulsed columns were used instead. The plutonium uranium reduction extraction (PUREX) process was developed at GE's Knolls Laboratory. The PUREX Plant, known as A Plant or Building 202‑A, commenced operation in 1955. Like the U Plant it used pulsed columns and tributyl phosphate as a solvent.[145][146]
The plant was 1,000 feet (300 m) long, 400 feet (120 m) high and 52 feet (16 m) wide. The processing canyon contained eleven processing areas. It operated from 1956 to 1972, and again from 1983 to 1988, when it reprocessed spent fuel rods from the reactors,[147] and processed approximately 66,400 metric tons of uranium fuel rods. The B and T Plants were shut down after it became operational in 1956, having processed 8,100 metric tons of fuel rods.[143] During the 1940s, the Hanford Site dumped 400 curies (15,000 GBq) into the Columbia River each day. This rose to 7,000 curies (260,000 GBq) per day between 1951 and 1953, and peaked at 20,000 curies (740,000 GBq) per day in 1959.[148]
N Reactor
The reactors had all been built for plutonium production, but with the
The Hanford Site was now home to nine nuclear reactors along the Columbia River, five reprocessing plants on the central plateau, and more than nine hundred support buildings and radiological laboratories around the site. Extensive modifications and upgrades were made to the original three World War II reactors, and a total of 177 underground waste tanks were built. Hanford was at its peak production from 1956 to 1965.
Decommissioning
By 1963 the AEC had estimated that it had sufficient plutonium for its needs for the foreseeable future, and planned to shut down the production reactors. To mitigate the economic impact, closures were carried out over a period of six years. The change of policy was not publicly announced; instead, each round of closures was accompanied by a statement that production needs could be met by the remaining facilities. The first round of closures was announced by President Johnson on January 8, 1964.[159] DR, H and F Reactors were shut down in 1964 and, 1965.[160] In 1967 the AEC announced that another reactor would be shut down. This was D Reactor, which was shut down on June 25, 1967. B Reactor followed on February 12, 1968.[160][161]
In January 1969, AEC chairman
The closures left only N Reactor, which continued to operate as a dual-purpose reactor, providing power to the civilian electrical grid via the WPPSS. By 1966 it was producing 35 percent of the United States' nuclear-generated electricity. Costs were lower than anticipated, allowing the WPPSS to retire $25 million budget (equivalent to $179 million in 2023) of the $122 million (equivalent to $875 million in 2023) it had raised in bonds to finance the project.[163] The Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union in April 1986 prompted multiple reviews of the safety of American reactors. Of all the reactors in the U.S., N Reactor was the most similar to the ill-fated No. 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in that it was graphite-moderated, although N Reactor used pressurized water rather than boiling water as a coolant. Like all the Hanford Site's reactors, it had no containment vessel and would never have passed the NRC's reactor safety requirements had they been applied to it. There was a public outcry, and the Government Accountability Office recommended closure. N Reactor was shut down in January 1987.[164] The PUREX plant reopened in 1983 to reprocess N Reactor reactor-grade fuel into weapon-grade fuel. This ended in December 1988, and it returned to standby status in October 1990.[165] The uranium trioxide plant closed in 1995, the PUREX plant closed for good in 1997, and the B Plant in 1998.[166] The T Plant remained in use, handling the storage, packaging and decontamination of radioactive wastes. It became the longest operational nuclear facility in the world.[167][168]
All but one of the Hanford production reactors were entombed ("cocooned") to allow the radioactive materials to decay, and the surrounding structures removed and buried.[169] This involved the removal of hundreds of tons of asbestos, concrete, steel and contaminated soil. The pumps and tunnels were dug up and razed, as were the auxiliary buildings. What was left were the core and shields. These were sealed up and a sloped steel roof added to draw off rainwater. Cocooning of C Reactor commenced in 1996, and was completed in 1998.[170] D Reactor followed in 2002,[171] F Reactor followed in 2003,[172] DR Reactor in 2004.[171] and H Reactor in 2005.[173] N Reactor was cocooned in 2012,[174] and KE and KW in 2022.[175]
The exception was B Reactor, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.[176] Some historians advocated converting it into a museum.[177][178] It was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service on August 19, 2008,[179][180][181] and on November 10, 2015, it became part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park alongside other sites at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos.[182] The United States Department of Energy (DOE) offers free guided tours of the site which can be reserved via the department's website, and are open to all ages.[183] Between 2009 and 2018, approximately eighty thousand people visited the site, bringing an estimated annual tourist income of two million dollars to the surrounding area.[181]
Reactor name | Start-up date | Shutdown date | Initial power (MW) | Final power (MW) | Cocooned |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
B Reactor | September 25, 1944 | February 12, 1968 | 250 | 2,210 | Not cocooned[185] |
D Reactor | December 14, 1944 | June 25, 1967 | 250 | 2,165 | 2004[186] |
F Reactor | February 24, 1945 | June 25, 1965 | 250 | 2,040 | 2003[187] |
H Reactor | October 19, 1949 | April 21, 1965 | 400 | 2,140 | 2005[188] |
DR ("D Replacement") Reactor | October 3, 1950 | December 30, 1964 | 250 | 2,015 | 2002[189] |
C Reactor | November 18, 1952 | April 25, 1969 | 650 | 2,500 | 1998[190] |
KW ("K West") Reactor | January 4, 1955 | February 1, 1970 | 1,800 | 4,400 | Not cocooned[175] |
KE ("K East") Reactor | April 17, 1955 | January 1971 | 1,800 | 4,400 | 2022[175] |
N Reactor | December 1963 | January 1987 | 4,000 | 4,000 | 2012[191] |
Later operations
Although uranium enrichment and plutonium breeding were slowly phased out, the nuclear legacy left an indelible mark on the Tri-Cities. Since World War II, the area had developed from a small farming community to a booming "Atomic Frontier" to a powerhouse of the nuclear-industrial complex. Decades of federal investment created a community of highly skilled scientists and engineers. As a result of this concentration of specialized skills, the Hanford Site attempted to diversify its operations to include scientific research, test facilities, and commercial nuclear power production.[192]
When GE announced that it was ending the contract to run the Hanford Site in 1963, the AEC decided to separate the contract among multiple operators. The contract to run the research laboratory at the site was awarded to the Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio, on May 28, 1964, and the laboratory became the Pacific Northwest Laboratory on January 4, 1965. In 1995, it achieved national laboratory status and became The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Battelle's contract allowed it to perform research for government and private companies, so it was able to branch out into related areas.[193][194] In 2022, the laboratory employed 5,314 staff and had an annual budget of $1.2 billion.[195]
The
The
The Hanford Reach was preserved as the finest salmon breeding ground in the Pacific Northwest. The end of plutonium production at the Hanford Site meant that it no longer required the areas around the old production sites. On June 9, 2000, President Bill Clinton designated almost 200,000 hectares (490,000 acres) of the Hanford Site as a national monument. The Hanford Reach National Monument is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service under an agreement with the DOE. On June 28, 2000, a fire burned 164,000 acres (66,000 ha) of the monument.[214][215]
Environmental concerns
Between 1944 and 1971, pump systems drew as much as 75,000 US gallons per minute (4,700 L/s) of cooling water from the Columbia River to dissipate the heat produced by the reactors. Before its release into the river, the used water was held in large tanks known as
The plutonium separation process resulted in the release of radioactive isotopes into the air, which were carried by the wind throughout southeastern Washington and into parts of
Beginning in the 1960s scientists with the
Of the 177 tanks at Hanford, 149 had a single shell. Historically single-shell tanks were used for storing radioactive liquid waste and designed to last twenty years. By 2005, some liquid waste was transferred from single-shell tanks to (safer) double-shell tanks. A substantial amount of residue remains in the older single-shell tanks with one containing an estimated 447,000 US gallons (1,690,000 L) of radioactive sludge, for example. It is believed that up to six of these "empty" tanks are leaking. Two tanks were reportedly leaking 300 US gallons (1,100 L) per year each, while the remaining four tanks were each leaking 15 US gallons (57 L) per year.[222][223] In February 2013, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced that a tank storing radioactive waste at the site had been leaking liquids on average of 150 to 300 US gallons (570 to 1,140 L) per year. He said that though the leak posed no immediate health risk to the public, it should not be an excuse for not doing anything.[224] On February 22, 2013, he stated that six more tanks were leaking.[225]
Occupational health concerns
While major releases of radioactive material ended with the reactor shutdown in the 1970s and many of the most dangerous wastes are contained, there were continued concerns about contaminated groundwater headed toward the Columbia River and about workers' health and safety.[226] In 1976, Harold McCluskey, a Hanford technician, received the largest recorded dose of americium following a laboratory accident in the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Due to prompt medical intervention, he survived the incident and died eleven years later of natural causes.[227]
Since 1987, workers have reported exposure to harmful vapors after working around underground nuclear storage tanks, with no solution found. More than forty workers in 2014 alone reported smelling vapors and became ill with "nosebleeds, headaches, watery eyes, burning skin, contact dermatitis, increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, coughing, sore throats, expectorating, dizziness and nausea ... Several of these workers have long-term disabilities."[228] Doctors checked workers and cleared them to return to work. Monitors worn by tank workers have found no samples with chemicals close to the federal limit for occupational exposure.[228]
In August 2014, OSHA ordered the facility to rehire a contractor and pay $220,000 in back wages for firing the employee for whistleblowing on safety concerns at the site.[229] On November 19, 2014, the attorney general of Washington, Bob Ferguson, said the state planned to sue the DOE and its contractor to protect workers from hazardous vapors at Hanford. A 2014 report by the DOE Savannah River National Laboratory initiated by 'Washington River Protection Solutions' found that DOE's methods to study vapor releases were inadequate, particularly, that they did not account for short but intense vapor releases. They recommended "proactively sampling the air inside tanks to determine its chemical makeup; accelerating new practices to prevent worker exposures; and modifying medical evaluations to reflect how workers are exposed to vapors".[228]
Cleanup under Superfund
Organization
Decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons (200 ML) of
On May 15, 1989, the
In 2011, DOE, the federal agency charged with overseeing the site, "interim stabilized" 149 single-shell tanks by pumping nearly all the liquid waste out into 28 newer double-shell tanks. Solids, known as salt cake and sludge, remained. The 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) per year into the ground since about 2010. In 2012, the DOE also discovered a leak from a double-shell tank caused by construction flaws and corrosion in the tank's bottom, and that twelve other double-shell tanks had similar construction flaws. Since then, the DOE began monitoring single-shell tanks monthly and double-shell tanks every three years. The DOE also changed the methods by which they monitored the tanks. In March 2014, the DOE announced further delays in the construction of the Waste Treatment Plant, which affected the schedule for removing waste from the tanks.[235]
The cleanup effort was managed by the DOE under the oversight of the two regulatory agencies. A citizen-led Hanford Advisory Board provides recommendations from community stakeholders, including local and state governments, regional environmental organizations, business interests, and Native American tribes.[236] For the Native Americans, the cleanup took on a moral and religious aspect. A particular focus was the conservation of indigenous fauna and flora, such as the Umtanum desert buckwheat, which only grows in the area and was prized by Native Americans for its medicinal properties.[237]
Cleanup activities
Citing the 2014 Hanford Lifecycle Scope Schedule and Cost report, the 2014 estimated cost of the remaining Hanford cleanup was $113.6 billion – more than $3 billion per year for six years, with a lower cost projection of approximately $2 billion per year until 2046.[238][239][226]
Originally scheduled to be complete within thirty years, the cleanup was less than half finished by 2008.[226] Of the four areas that were formally listed as Superfund sites on October 4, 1989, only one had been removed from the list.[240] Intermittent discoveries of undocumented contamination have slowed the pace and raised the cost of cleanup.[241] Cleanup activity was still ongoing in 2023, with over 10,000 workers employed on cleanup activities.[242]
The most significant challenge is stabilizing the 53,000,000 US gallons (200 ML) of high-level radioactive waste stored in the 177 underground tanks. By 1998 about a third of these tanks had leaked waste into the soil and groundwater.[243] By 2008 most of the liquid waste had been transferred to more secure double-shelled tanks; however, 2,800,000 US gallons (11 ML) of liquid waste, together with 27,000,000 US gallons (100,000,000 L) of salt cake and sludge, remains in the single-shelled tanks.[230] DOE lacks information about the extent to which the 27 double-shell tanks may be susceptible to corrosion. Without determining the extent to which the factors that contributed to the leak in AY‑102 were similar to the other 27 double-shell tanks, DOE could not be sure how long its double-shell tanks can safely store waste.[235] That waste was originally scheduled to be removed by 2018. By 2008, the revised deadline was 2040.[226] By 2008, 1,000,000 US gallons (3,800,000 L) of radioactive waste was traveling through the groundwater toward the Columbia River. This waste was expected to reach the river in twelve to fifty years if cleanup does not proceed on schedule.[230]
Under the Tri-Party Agreement, lower-level hazardous wastes are buried in huge lined pits that will be sealed and monitored with sophisticated instruments for many years. Disposal of plutonium and other high-level wastes is a more difficult problem that continues to be a subject of intense debate. As an example, plutonium‑239 has a half-life of 24,100 years, and a decay of ten half-lives is required before a sample is considered to cease its radioactivity.[244][245] In 2000 the DOE awarded a $4.3 billion contract to Bechtel, a San Francisco-based construction and engineering firm, to build a vitrification plant to combine the dangerous wastes with glass to render them stable. Construction began in 2002. The plant was originally scheduled to be operational by 2011, with vitrification completed by 2028.[226][246][247]
According to a 2012 study by the Government Accountability Office, there were a number of serious unresolved technical and managerial problems.[248] In 2013 the estimated costs were $13.4 billion with commencement of operations estimated to be in 2022 and about three decades of operation.[249] A potential radioactive leak was reported in 2013; the cleanup was estimated to have cost $40 billion, with $115 billion more required.[250] Another leak was reported in April 2021.[251]
In May 2007 state and federal officials began closed-door negotiations about the possibility of extending legal cleanup deadlines for waste vitrification in exchange for shifting the focus of the cleanup to urgent priorities, such as groundwater remediation. Those talks stalled in October 2007. In early 2008, a $600 million cut to the Hanford cleanup budget was proposed. Washington state officials expressed concern about the budget cuts, as well as missed deadlines and recent safety lapses at the site, and threatened to file a lawsuit alleging that the DOE was in violation of environmental laws.[226] They appeared to step back from that threat in April 2008 after another meeting of federal and state officials resulted in progress toward a tentative agreement.[252] Some of the radioactive waste at Hanford was supposed to be stored in the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository,[253] but after that project was suspended, Washington State sued, joined by South Carolina.[254] Their first suit was dismissed in July 2011.[255] In a subsequent suit, federal authorities were ordered to either approve or reject plans for the Yucca Mountain storage site.[256]
During excavations from 2004 to 2007, a sample of purified plutonium was uncovered inside a safe in a waste trench, and has been dated to about the 1940s, making it the second-oldest sample of purified plutonium known to exist. Analyses published in 2009 concluded that the sample originated at Oak Ridge, and was one of several sent to Hanford for optimization tests of the T Plant until Hanford could produce its own plutonium. Documents refer to such a sample, belonging to "Watt's group", which was disposed of in its safe when a radiation leak was suspected.[257][258]
As of 2023, 60 sq mi (160 km2) of the site's groundwater remains contaminated above federal standards, a reduction from 80 sq mi (210 km2) in the 1980s.[234]
Date begun | Organization | Responsibility | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|
December 12, 1942 | U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
|
Lead U.S. Government entity | Held role until January 1, 1947 |
December 12, 1942 | E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company (DuPont) | All site activities | Initial Hanford site contractor |
September 1, 1946 | General Electric Company (GE) | All site activities | Replaced DuPont |
January 1, 1947 | Atomic Energy Commission | Lead U.S. Government entity | Replaced U.S. Army Corps of Engineers |
May 15, 1953 | Vitro Engineers | Hanford Engineering Services | Assumed GEs new facility design role |
June 1, 1953 | J. A. Jones Construction | Hanford Construction Services | Assumed GEs construction role |
January 1, 1965 | U.S. Testing | Environmental & bioassay testing | Assumed GEs environmental and bioassay testing role |
January 4, 1965 | Battelle Memorial Institute | Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) | Assumed GE's laboratory operations – subsequently renamed Pacific Northwest National Laboratory |
July 1, 1965 | Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) | Computer services | New scope |
August 1, 1965 | Hanford Occupational Health Foundation | Industrial Medicine | Assumed GE's industrial medicine role |
September 10, 1965 | Douglas United Nuclear | Single pass reactor operations & fuel fabrication | Assumed part of GE's reactor operations |
January 1, 1966 | Isochem | Chemical processing | Assumed GE's chemical processing operations |
March 1, 1966 | ITT Federal Support Services, Inc. | Support services | Assumed |
July 1, 1967 | Douglas United Nuclear | N Reactor operation | Assumed remainder of GE's reactor operations |
September 4, 1967 | Atlantic Richfield Hanford Company | Chemical Processing | Replaced Isochem |
August 8, 1967 | Hanford Environmental Health Foundation | Industrial Medicine | Name change only |
February 1, 1970 | Westinghouse Hanford Company
|
Hanford Engineering Development Laboratory | Spun off from PNL with mission to build the Fast Flux Test Facility |
September 1971 | ARHCO | Support Services | Replaces ITT/PSS |
April 1973 | United Nuclear Industries, Inc. | All production reactor operations | Name change from Douglas United Nuclear only |
January 1, 1975 | Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) | Lead U.S. Government entity | Replaced AEC – managed site until October 1, 1977 |
October 1, 1975 | Boeing Computer Services (BCS) | Computer services | Replaced CSC |
October 1, 1977 | U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
|
Lead U.S. Government Agency | Replaced ERDA – manages site presently |
October 1, 1977 | Rockwell Hanford Operations (RHO) | Chemical Processing & Support Services | Replaces ARCHO |
June 1981 | Braun Hanford Company (BHC) | Architect & Engineering Services | Replaces Vitro |
March 1982 | Kaiser Engineering Hanford (KEH) | Architect & Engineering Services | Replaces BHC |
March 1, 1987 | KEH | Construction | Consolidated contract includes former J. A. Jones work |
June 29, 1987 | WHC
|
Site management & operations | Consolidated contract includes former RHO, UNC & KEH work. |
October 1, 1996 | Fluor Daniel Hanford, Inc. (FDH) | Site management & operations | FDH is integrating contractor with 13 subcontracted companies |
February 7, 2000 | Fluor Hanford | Site cleanup operations | Transition to site cleanup (13 Fluor subcontractors held various roles) |
December 11, 2000 | Bechtel National, Inc. | Engineering, construction, and commissioning of the Waste Treatment Plant | |
October 1, 2008 | Ch2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company | Central plateau cleanup and closure | |
April 8, 2009 | Washington Closure Hanford | River corridor cleanup and closure | |
May 26, 2009 | Mission Support Alliance | Site infrastructure and services | Consolidated services contract |
October 1, 2009 | Washington River Protection Solutions | Tank Farm operations |
See also
Notes
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- ^ Hanford Island Archaeological Site (NRHP #76001870) and Hanford North Archaeological District (NRHP #76001871). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007. (See also the commercial site National Register of Historic Places.)
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- ^ "Hanford Site Tour Script" (PDF). Department of Energy. October 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 27, 2008. Retrieved January 29, 2007.
- ^ a b "DOE settles dispute over Hanford site with Washington Ecology Department". Nuclear Engineering International. September 20, 2023. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
- ^ a b GAO (November 25, 2014). "Condition of Tanks May Further Limit DOE's Ability to Respond to Leaks and Intrusions – Highlights". GAO Highlights (GAO-15-40). U.S. GAO. Retrieved December 22, 2014.
- ^ "Hanford Site: Hanford Advisory Board". United States Department of Energy. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
- ^ Golden, Hallie (August 20, 2022). "Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it". The Guardian. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
- ^ Tri-Party Agreement: Department of Energy, Washington State Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (February 2014). "2014 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report" (PDF). DOE, WSDE, EPA. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 21, 2014. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
- ^ Cary, Annette (February 21, 2014). "New Hanford clean up price tag is $113.6B". Yakima Herald. Archived from the original on April 20, 2014. Retrieved April 20, 2014.
- ^ "Hanford 1100-Area (USDOE) Superfund site". U.S. EPA. Retrieved February 3, 2010.
- ^ Stang, John (December 21, 2010). "Spike in radioactivity a setback for Hanford cleanup". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved November 17, 2022.
- ^ "About Hanford Cleanup". Hanford Site. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
- ^ Wald, Matthew (January 16, 1998). "Panel Details Management Flaws at Hanford Nuclear Waste Site". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 11, 2008. Retrieved January 29, 2007.
- ^ Hanson, Laura A. (November 2000). "Radioactive Waste Contamination of Soil and Groundwater at the Hanford Site" (PDF). University of Idaho. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 27, 2008. Retrieved January 31, 2008.
- ISBN 1-57477-134-5.
- ^ Dininny, Shannon (September 8, 2006). "Hanford plant now $12.2 billion". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved January 29, 2007.
- ^ The Economist, "Nuclear waste: From bombs to $800 handbags", March 19, 2011, p. 40.
- ^ "Hanford Waste Treatment Plant: DOE Needs to Take Action to Resolve Technical and Management Challenges". Government Accountability Office. December 19, 2012. GAO-13-38. Retrieved May 9, 2013.
- ^ Valerie Brown (May 9, 2013). "Hanford Nuclear Waste Cleanup Plant May Be Too Dangerous: Safety issues make plans to clean up a mess left over from the construction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal uncertain". Scientific American. Retrieved May 9, 2013.
The Vit Plant was supposed to start operating in 2007 and is now projected to begin in 2022. Its original budget was $4.3 billion and is now estimated at $13.4 billion.
- ^ "Possible radioactive leak into soil at Hanford". CBS News. June 21, 2013.
- ^ "Nuclear waste tank at Hanford site in Washington state may be leaking". Oregon Live. April 29, 2021. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
- ^ Stiffler, Lisa (April 3, 2008). "State steps back from brink of Hanford suit". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Archived from the original on December 16, 2008. Retrieved May 8, 2008.
- ^ Shannon Dininny (April 14, 2010). "Washington sues to keep Yucca alive". The Spokesman-Review. Associated Press. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
- World Nuclear News. April 7, 2011. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
- ^ Chad Mills (July 2, 2011). "Aiken County still optimistic after Yucca Mountain lawsuit dismissed in federal court". Tri-City Herald. Archived from the original on June 18, 2013. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
- ^ Daly, Matthew (August 13, 2013). "Home> Politics Appeals Court: Obama Violating Law on Nuke Site". ABC News. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
- ^ "Antique Plutonium: Manhattan Project-era plutonium is found in a glass jug during Hanford Site cleanup". Chemical & Engineering News. January 29, 2009. Retrieved November 12, 2022.
- ^ Cary, Annette (January 25, 2009). "Historic plutonium found in safe at Hanford". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved November 17, 2022.
- ^ Briggs, J. D. (March 22, 2001). "Historical Time Line and Information about the Hanford Site, Richland, Washington" (PDF). Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 17, 2013. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
References
- Abbotts, John (September 2004). "The Long, Slow Death of the Fast Flux Facility". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 60 (5): 56–62. ISSN 0096-3402.
- Brown, Kate (2013). OCLC 813540523.
- Carlisle, Rodney P.; Zenzen, Joan M. (2019). Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal: American Production Reactors, 1942–1992. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. OCLC 1325858668.
- Cullum, George W. (1950). Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point New York since its Establishment in 1802: Supplement Volume IX 1940–1950. Chicago, Illinois: R. R. Donnelly and Sons, The Lakeside Press. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
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- Findlay, John; Hevly, Bruce (1995). Nuclear Technologies and Nuclear Communities: A History of Hanford and the Tri-Cities, 1943–1993 (PDF). Seattle, Washington: Hanford History Project, Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 12, 2022. Retrieved October 12, 2022.
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Further reading
- Findlay, John M.; Hevly, Bruce (2011). OCLC 768474075. Explores the history of the Hanford nuclear reservation and the tri-cities of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick, Washington
- Neitzel, D. A., ed. (September 2005). Hanford Site National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Characterization (PDF) (Report). Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. PNNL-6415 Rev. 17. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 1, 2006. Retrieved November 30, 2022.
- Olson, Steve (2020). The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. OCLC 1252843981. Recounts the role of the Hanford site in creation and continuation of nuclear weapons
- Pope, Daniel (2008). Nuclear Implosions: The Rise and Fall of the Washington Public Power Supply System. New York: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 172979863.
External links
- Official website
- Federal agency that regulates Hanford cleanup
- State agency that regulates Hanford cleanup
- Historic American Engineering Recorddocumentation:
- HAER No. WA-127, "D-Reactor Complex", 16 photos, 77 data pages, 2 photo caption pages
- HAER No. WA-127-A, "D-Reactor Complex, Deaeration Plant – Refrigeration Buildings", 13 photos, 2 photo caption pages
- HAER No. WA-127-B, "D-Reactor Complex, Tank Room and Process Pump House", 1 photo, 1 photo caption page
- HAER No. WA-127-C, "D-Reactor Complex, Process Water Pumphouse Annex", 2 photos, 1 photo caption page
- HAER No. WA-127-D, "D-Reactor Complex, Underwater Test Facility", 3 photos, 1 photo caption page
- HAER No. WA-128-A, "Plutonium Finishing Plant, Waste Incinerator Facility", 26 photos, 27 data pages, 2 photo caption pages
- HAER No. WA-129-A, "Reduction-Oxidation Complex, Plutonium Concentration Facility", 13 photos, 15 data pages, 2 photo caption pages
- Portland State University Library, Hanford Collection Historic records, committee hearing materials, scientific studies, and public comment documents are held by the Portland State University Library "Hanford Collection." See finding aid.