Tagged: Hanford

RICHLAND, Wash. – Over the last two years we’ve brought you numerous stories about high-level whistleblowers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's nuclear waste treatment plant. It’s one of the largest environmental cleanup projects on Earth. Now, yet another top expert there is risking his career to speak openly. He tells our correspondent Anna King the plant’s vessels and pipes -- as they’re designed now -- will leak radioactive waste within their planned lifespan.

RICHLAND, Wash. – The Department of Energy is starting work on a plan to build a 30-mile natural gas pipeline to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s waste treatment plant. The announcement Monday includes few details but the pipeline would likely go under the Columbia River.

Hanford’s waste treatment plant is going to need a lot of power. After all, its purpose is to mix radioactive sludge with glass material to form molten liquid. That brew, once cooled, would form huge glass logs for long-term storage.

RICHLAND, Wash. – The Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s tank farms in southeast Washington may have much more plutonium than earlier estimated. That’s according to a report by a Hanford contractor that’s just been leaked to public radio. As Anna King reports, At least one high-level Hanford official worries the findings could mean a massive waste treatment plant’s design might need to be altered.

The city of Richland was once a very small agricultural community. Then during the Second World War, the US army turned it into a bedroom community for workers on the Manhattan Project in neighboring Hanford. Richland became a closed city. Only residents had access, along with those who got Army clearance. Retired chemist Steve Buckingham, telling his daughter Theresa Bergsman about life in Richland in 1947.

RICHLAND, Wash. - The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is famously home to 53 million gallons of radioactive sludge. But over it's long history, the site has also collected scads of work materials, lab supplies and clothing that are also contaminated. Now, federal and state officials have agreed on a new set of deadlines for cleaning up that tricky waste.

RICHLAND, Wash. – The Hanford Nuclear Reservation recently accepted another spent nuclear reactor from the U.S. Navy. The reactors travel by barge from the naval shipyard in Bremerton, along the Washington Coast and up the Columbia River to Richland.

The US Department of Energy is planning how and to what extent to clean up Hanford's leaking storage tanks, treat radioactive waste and deal with a contaminated reactor. The current preferred alternatives don't call for a full clean up of the site.

Twenty community members testified. Many, like Marilyn Cohen, also spoke out against having any further waste shipped to Hanford for storage and processing.