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The Columbia River at Risk:
Why Hanford Cleanup is Vital to Oregon
The desert of southeastern Washington is home to what may be the most contaminated area in the United States. For more than 40 years the U.S. Government produced plutonium for nuclear weapons at the Hanford Site. Now, with the Cold War behind us, the focus at Hanford is on cleaning up the enormous amounts of radioactive and chemically hazardous wastes produced while making plutonium.
Hanford was home to America´s first plutonium production facilities. Production began in 1944 as part of the Manhattan Project - the World War II effort to build an atomic bomb. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in August of 1945.
For the next 45 years, Hanford´s primary mission was to produce plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. During that time, Hanford went through several major expansions. Eventually, the government built nine nuclear production reactors, five chemical separation plants and dozens of support facilities. Plutonium production ended at Hanford in 1990. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) manages the 586 square mile Hanford Site.
Site workers are now engaged in the world´s largest environmental cleanup project. More than 19-hundred waste sites have been identified at Hanford - ranging from small areas of surface contamination to 177 underground storage tanks that hold about 53 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste. Some of Hanford´s waste will remain dangerous for thousands of years. It must be kept away from people and the environment during that time.
There is urgency to the cleanup. In many cases, the longer the delay, the more hazardous and expensive the problem becomes. Many storage facilities have exceeded their design life and are deteriorating, making it much more difficult to safely store the waste. Some of the waste poses a significant threat to workers, the public and the environment. An accident, or further spread of the contamination, could put the region´s economy at risk.
Much of the Hanford Site is free of contamination. Large areas of the site were used as safety and security buffers. However, the central plateau area has substantial problems. The plateau contains the underground storage tanks, the chemical processing plants and other plutonium facilities. Burial grounds and contaminated groundwater also pose significant cleanup challenges.
The waste in Hanford´s underground tanks presents the most urgent, complex and costly challenge. 149 of the 177 tanks have just a single wall of steel encased in concrete for containment. These tanks, which range in size from 55,000 to one million gallons, were never intended for long-term storage. The oldest of these tanks date back to the mid-1940s. Nearly 70 have leaked more than a million gallons of high-level radioactive waste to the ground. Some of this waste has reached the groundwater.
The remaining 28 tanks have a double shell of steel and none are believed to have leaked, although some are showing signs of aging. These tanks cannot be used indefinitely. In time, they will also fail.
Site workers have pumped most of the liquid out of the single shell tanks into the double shell tanks. When the liquids are removed, a semi-solid sludge-like material remains behind.
Current plans are to retrieve the waste from the tanks - including the sludge - and separate it into two waste streams. One waste stream will contain the majority of the radioactivity, the other will contain much smaller amounts of radioactivity. After separation, the high activity waste stream will then be vitrified - a process that mixes the radioactive wastes with molten glass. The mixture is poured into stainless steel containers where it will harden into a solid, glass form.
The canisters of highly radioactive waste will be stored indefinitely at Hanford. The low-activity waste - which will make up the majority of Hanford´s waste - will be immobilized using vitrification and other technologies. It will then be buried on site. The immobilized wastes will still be radioactive but they will no longer be mobile. As long as waste remains in these aging tanks, it poses a severe threat to the Columbia River.
The U.S. Department of Energy is working with a private contractor to design and build the vitrification facilities.Because of a number of problems, these facilities are not scheduled to be operational until 2018. It may take 20 to 30 years to then vitrify all the waste.
Leaks from the tanks, along with billions of gallons of radioactive and hazardous liquid waste that was dumped into the soil at Hanford, have contaminated nearly 200 square miles of groundwater beneath the site. Efforts to intercept and treat some of these waste plumes before they reach the Columbia River have met with some success, but are not the long-term solution. A final strategy to clean up the groundwater contamination has not been determined.
The cost of Hanford cleanup and the availability of sufficient funding is an on-going concern. Cleanup will take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars. Construction and operation of the tank waste treatment facilities, along with other cleanup work at the site, will require sustained funding of one and a half to two billion dollars each year.
Hanford is just one of about a dozen major sites around the country and more than 75 overall, that were involved in producing materials for America´s nuclear weapons program. Although Hanford has the most extensive contamination and waste problems, other sites have their own unique cleanup challenges.
Oregon´s Concerns
Oregon works with DOE and the two Hanford regulators - the Washington Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - to ensure issues of concern to Oregon are addressed. Oregon has no regulatory authority over the Hanford cleanup. Hanford cleanup is governed by an agreement between the DOE, EPA, and the State of Washington. This cleanup plan, called the Tri-Party Agreement, was initially signed in 1989. The Tri-Party Agreement sets timetables for accomplishing the cleanup activities and covers about 30 years of work.
The State of Oregon´s prime concern is the Columbia River. The river is vital to irrigation and the region´s inland commerce. The Columbia fishery is an important economic resource and the river is a valuable recreational asset.
Hanford´s contaminated groundwater and leaked tank waste pose a long-term threat to the river. Oregon´s position is that treatment of the groundwater must continue and that waste in the tanks must be removed and solidified to eliminate that threat to the river.
Concern about the river is just one of several reasons for Oregon´s involvement in Hanford issues. Radioactive waste is transported across Oregon to Hanford now. As cleanup moves along, much larger numbers of shipments, involving much more dangerous types of waste, will likely be trucked from Hanford, across northeast Oregon, to permanent disposal sites in other states.
Portions of two Oregon counties are within the 50-mile nuclear emergency-planning radius of the Hanford Site. The people here could be at risk in the event of a major accident at Hanford. Moreover, this area includes important agricultural, fishing and other natural resource areas vital to the economy of the state. Oregon has worked with these two counties to develop an emergency plan to respond to an incident at Hanford.
Oregon also works with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) on Hanford issues of mutual concern. The CTUIR was designated by Congress as "affected" by Hanford. Oregon and the CTUIR developed a Memorandum of Understanding to ensure continued cooperative efforts.
Oregon works to involve the public in Hanford issues. The Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board is a key part of this public involvement process. The 20-member Board, which includes ten citizen members, strongly believes the public must have a say in critical Hanford decisions. Oregon and the Cleanup Board have helped identify methods to better involve the public in Hanford issues.
Considerable progress has been made in many areas since cleanup began at Hanford in 1989. However, until the waste is removed from the tanks and solidified, and other major cleanup projects are completed, Hanford´s waste remains a serious threat to the Northwest and its residents.
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