A short history of waste management at the Hanford Site

The world’s first full-scale nuclear reactors and chemical reprocessing plants built at the Hanford Site in the desert of southeastern Washington State produced two-thirds of the plutonium generated in the United States for nuclear weapons. Operating these facilities also created large volumes of radioactive and chemical waste, some of which was released into the environment exposing people who lived downwind and downstream. Hanford now contains the largest accumulation of nuclear waste in the Western Hemisphere.Hanford’s last reactor shut down in 1987 followed by closure of the last reprocessing plant in 1990. Today, Hanford’s only mission is cleanup. Most onsite radioactive waste and nuclear material lingers inside underground tanks or storage facilities. About half of the chemical waste remains in tanks while the rest persists in the soil, groundwater, and burial grounds. Six million dollars each day, or nearly two billion dollars each year, are spent on waste management and cleanup activities. There is significant uncertainty in how long cleanup will take, how much it will cost, and what risks will remain for future generations.This paper summarizes portions of the waste management history of the Hanford Site published in the book “Hanford: A Conversation about Nuclear Waste and Cleanup.” (Gephart, 2003).