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A lot of the people come here with a lot of questions; a lot of people come here with
some concerns.
One word for Hanford, ahhh... "Hm. Uh."
"Um."
The one word I would use to describe Hanford would be "change."
"Massive." "Enormous." "Employment." I suppose it's "cleanup."
"Um, controversial." "Toxic." "Taxes." "Technology." "Bureaucracy." "Nuclear weapons production."
I think of "testing." "Energy." "Science." "Jobs." "Unsustainable."
"Moneypit." "Historic." "Chaotic." "Radioactivity." "Impossible." "It's ubelievable." "Unsafe." "Complicated."
Maybe the best work is "complex."
Welcome to Hanford.
It's here in this seemingly nondescript desert of southeastern Washington State
that you will find one of our nation's most compelling stories.
Hanford offers everything a storyteller would want
from intrigue and patriotism to
controversy and science 'fact'ion.
Hanford
a place that is rich in culture and history that transitioned into a
community
committed to cleaning up a sixty-year legacy of plutonium production and waste,
and is equally dedicated to delivering on a promise of clean energy and
environment for future generations.
The Hanford most people are familiar with was born out of an intense race to
produce the world's first atomic bomb during the Second World War.
Before there was a Hanford
these wind blown plains served Native American tribes such as the Wanapum,
Yakama,
Umatilla,
and Nez Perce, who hunted,
fished, and gathered traditional foods and medicines along the banks of the
Columbia River.
With the Gold Rush and westward expansion,
early settlers began arriving to the area in the mid-1800s,
establishing the farming communities of White Bluffs and the Hanford township.
Life was hard in those days but the communities flourished
Growing to a population of some 1,300 residents.
Everything was hunky-dory,
that is, until 1943.
The U.S. War Department
hand-picked Hanford for its plutonium production needs as part of the
Manhattan Project.
the recently constructed Grand Coulee Dam
offered the electricity and infrastructure necessary to operate the reactors.
The area was remote and sparsely populated and the Columbia River offered a
plentiful source of cold water,
also necessary for the operation of the nuclear reactors and the plutonium they
yielded.
With that,
the government gave the residents of White Bluffs and the Hanford township
30 days to leave
so construction on the Hanford Site could begin.
The Hanford construction effort began in earnest in 1943, drawing
tens of thousands of workers from across the U.S.
Hundreds of facilities and buildings, along with their supporting
infrastructure
were constructed across the 586 square mile site,
an area that with the easily fit the city of Los Angeles today,
with plenty of room to spare.
In fact, Hanford is a city in its own right,
with more than 500 miles of road,
1.2 million square feet of facility space,
12,000 phone lines and 40 meteorological monitoring stations.
At its peak
Hanford employed some 50,000 people
ranging from laborers and security personnel, to scientists and engineers.
One of the world's greatest construction projects of that era
Hanford's B Reactor is perhaps the Site's most iconic image,
the world's first full-scale production nuclear reactor.
This ambitious engineering feat went from design to start up in just 13
months
under a high degree of secrecy
with minimal blueprints, drawings, or designs developed for reference by
workers.
Well, I was directed to the
administration building which is located
about where the Federal Building is now,
and I was signed in and and I was instructed to
go to the 300 Area to begin with.
I had no idea what I was here for
and I came strictly for
several personal reasons
and for the money.
The race to produce the world's first atomic bomb was running at a fevered pitch.
While small amounts of plutonium had been produced at facilities in Chicago,
nothing of this magnitude or complexity had ever been attempted.
Producing plutonium was complex and messy,
with the added potential of being catastrophically lethal.
The process started
with uranium billets that were fabricated into nuclear fuel rods in the
300 Area
and transported via rail to the 100 Area,
where they were inserted into one of multiple process tubes in the
30-foot high reactor core.
With water from the Columbia River rushing into the reactor
a nuclear chain reaction transformed uranium into plutonium.
It's hard for people to imagine the enormous energy that's produced in a reactor but
as I remember the flow at that time was like 186,000
gallons a minute,
and that water is entering the front face
cold, ice cold,
and it's exiting the rear face at nearly boiling temperatures in that short
distance of time.
And there are 2,004 process tubes going through there and so
it's hard to imagine
the energy that is
contained
unless you hear, and you see it, and you feel it; it's just a
massive amount of energy that you experience. But the start up
like that is is phenomenal.
After a short cooling off period
the now highly irradiated fuel rods were transported to T Plant in Hanford's
200 Area.
T Plant was one of several enormous facilities the size of ocean liners.
In fact,
they were frequently referred to as 'Queen Marys' by Hanford workers.
It was here they separated plutonium from irradiated fuel rods
using a complex and
massive liquid chemical bath process.
T Plant was the first facility of its kind in the world;
like the world's most elaborate and intricate gold panning operation, the
process yielded minute amounts of plutonium,
by weight,
the most expensive material on the planet.
The extracted plutonium
was processed into buttons,
buttons that would serve as the core of the atomic bomb.
Millions of gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, a byproduct of
this chemical separation process,
were stored in roughly 60 underground tanks,
ranging from a half a million
to a million gallons in capacity.
Ultimately,
the Manhattan Project was a success
and the long kept secret was out.
The plutonium produced at Hanford was used in the 'Fat Man' bomb dropped on
Nagasaki
on August 9, 1945,
forcing Japan's surrender
and bringing an end to the war.
Ushering in the atomic age,
Hanford continued to support America's peace-through-strength policies
throughout the Cold War,
producing enough plutonium
to maintain a continual and formidable deterrent to any potentially hostile
nation,
namely the Soviet Union.
However, during these critical wartime and national security missions
the thought of what to do with the resulting waste and what its impact on
the environment might be was secondary to the need for immediate production and
use of the vital plutonium.
Nearly two hundred million gallons of this waste was held in underground
storage tanks, or worse -
returned directly to the ground.
There were two big headers on each side of the Reactor
and the effluent
was then distributed out to a cooling basin
for a period of time
and then the water was taken in an underground pipe
and it
went out to the middle of the river,
underneath the river, and then it was distributed
and discharged there.
The sheer magnitude of the impact on the environment is staggering,
resulting in nearly incomprehensible numbers,
numbers like
270 billion gallons of contaminated ground water,
25 million cubic feet of buried or stored solid waste,
2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel,
20 tons of plutonium-bearing materials,
and 53 million gallons of waste in 177 underground
storage tanks.
This waste is the legacy of more than 5 decades of plutonium production,
making it easy to see how Hanford became the largest, most complex environmental
cleanup effort in the world.
The materials were developed that were highly radioactive
and so they were taken outside the fence and a trench was dug
and they were buried and that was how it was disposed of in those days.
The Department of Energy's mission at Hanford changed from production to
clean up in 1989
when a landmark agreement was reached between the Department of Energy,
the Environmental Protection Agency,
and the State of Washington known as the Tri-Party Agreement.
The accord established hundreds of milestones for bringing the Hanford site into
compliance with federal and state environmental regulations.
Over the past 20 years incredible progress has been made,
resulting in the successful treatment of 4.4 billion gallons of
contaminated ground water,
movement of all spent nuclear fuel to dry storage, shipment of all plutonium
special nuclear materials designated for off site storage
out of Washington State,
and the removal of all pumpable liquids from 149 single-shelled
underground storage tanks.
Significantly,
Hanford cleanup activities have resulted in exposure to the public that are
exceedingly low,
less than one millirem per year,
well below regulatory limits.
However, the challenges of cleanup continue to be daunting.
It might leave some wondering
"What makes cleanup so complicated, and why does it take so long?"
One of the reasons it's complex
is because as like when they built the
production reactors there was no blueprint to follow
so we now are in the process of developing that blueprint in terms of
the cleanup strategy. We have combination of both radionuclides as well as
chemicals in terms of contaminants that we have to clean up at the Hanford Site.
So that causes us to
insure that we are
being very conservative in terms of protection of our workers here on the
Site,
as well as we have to ensure that we're protecting
the natural environment
as well as our culture resources at the Hanford Site.
And a combination of all these things adds up to additional time which
translates as well into additional cost.
Today, the Hanford site geography is aligned specifically to address DOE's
2015 cleanup strategy,
as well as the construction of the Waste Treatment Plant that will operate well into
the future.
Nearly 290 square miles
make up the Hanford Reach National Monument and Arid Lands Ecology Reserve.
The 220 square mile River Corridor area
consists of the 100 Area reactors and
the 300 Area's fabrication and research facilities.
The Central Plateau,
made up of the 200 Area's processing and waste disposal facilities
including the Inner Area's
177 underground tanks.
Just like their predecessors 60 years ago,
some of the industry and government's best and brightest are focused on bringing
the latest in environmental research, technologies, and innovations to
accelerate the cleanup effort.
These 21st century scientists, engineers, laborers, and technologists
are busy making a new kind of history.
In addition to tearing down,
Hanford is also building up.
Upon completion of construction of the Waste Treatment Plant,
Hanford will be home to the world's largest chemical separations facility.
The Pretreatment Plant alone has a footprint equivalent to 4 football
fields and will be 12 stories tall with nearly one million feet of piping.
In 2019
this first-of-its-magnitude facility
is scheduled to begin to vitrify, or
turn into glass,
liquid tank waste,
making the waste much, much safer and easier to store and eventually dispose of.
As we look ahead to the 2015 Vision
Hanford will once again help set the stage for the future of both energy and
technology in the United States
and perhaps the world.
While completing the 2015 Vision
and shrinking the majority of the Hanford cleanup to the Central Plateau
represents a very significant accomplishment,
still
much work remains.
the 75 square mile Central Plateau
contains hundreds of large complex hazardous waste sites,
hundreds of contaminated facilities,
including the 5 huge processing canyons,
contamination deep in the ground that has the potential to affect groundwater,
and the operation of the Waste Treatment Plant, and treatment of the 53
million gallons of waste contained in the 177
underground tanks.
This difficult and complex work will take years to complete; however,
the Department of Energy is evaluating innovative new technologies to
accelerate completion of the tank waste mission.
As this progress is made
the Department of Energy has planned for the potential uses of site land in the
future including designated areas for preservation and potential industrial
development, as well as conservation and recreation.
Because clean-up will never result in the complete elimination of all
contamination
the government will continue to play an active role in Hanford's long-term
stewardship to help protect
its magnificent cultural, natural, and historic heritage.