Several low-activity waste containers sit at Hanford, while one high-level waste canister lays in the foreground. [Photo courtesy of Washington Department of Ecology.] Read A massive melter intended to help […]Read More
Jordan Ashue, 18, says he was surprised by how long it will take to clean up portions of Hanford. Credit: Annie Warren / NWPB Listen (Runtime 4:00) Read On a […]Read More
Recorrido en bote por el río Columbia durante el “Hanford Journey”, para celebrar la defensa de la limpieza. Crédito: Bear Sky Media. Read A medida que el presupuesto para limpieza […]Read More
Tom Carpenter, the man who headed the Hanford Challenge, and was a thorn in the side of many politicians, is retiring from the organization. Read More
At Hanford, a hazardous concoction of radioactive waste and chemicals sits in World War II and Cold War-era tanks. Now one of those old tanks has a serious leak. Read More
As President Donald Trump prepared to leave office, his Department of Energy was celebrating that a new analytical lab was “ready to operate” at the Hanford Site in southeast Washington.Read More
Under the settlement, Bechtel Corp. and Aecom will pay nearly $58 million over allegations from current or former Hanford employees. The workers said they were retaliated against for blowing the whistle over how labor hours were billed. Read More
Denin Koch's trip to the Hanford B Reactor when he was 19 stirred his musical passion. It eventually inspired a full jazz album exploring the complicated history of Hanford, 75 years after the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan ended WWII.Read More
Hackers working with the Chinese government targeted firms developing vaccines for the coronavirus and stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of intellectual property and trade secrets from companies across the world, the Justice Department said Tuesday as it announced criminal charges.Read More
The report from the independent Government Accountability Office says the U.S. Department of Energy has not found the root causes of the partial collapse of the waste-storage tunnel, and that failures in DOE’s investigation, inspections and maintenance of other aging and contaminated facilities is concerning.Read More
From 1949 to 1989, the massive plant’s job was to turn caustic liquids containing plutonium into solid plutonium “buttons,” as they were known. The finished buttons were about the size of hockey pucks and were used for America’s nuclear weapons. Read More
Washington Department of Ecology leaders say without access to this data, they can’t effectively protect the land, air and water for residents in eastern Washington and surrounding communities. They say they’ve attempted to negotiate this issue with federal Energy managers for years.Read More
At Hanford, in southeastern Washington, contractors have just completed much of the demo work at the site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. But now crews have to finish the job. And that’s the tough part. Read More
The creators of a new musical work called “Nuclear Dreams” highlight the dreams and nightmares of people who work and live near Hanford in Washington’s Tri-Cities. Read More
An astonishing array of animals and habitats flourished on six obsolete weapons complexes — mostly for nuclear or chemical arms — because the sites banned the public and other intrusions for decades.Read More
A new federal report says that a massive building at the Hanford Nuclear Site is worse off than managers thought. The so-called PUREX -- Plutonium Uranium Extraction -- plant isn’t clean. Starting in 1956 the plant processed loads of plutonium. Its walls are up to 6 feet thick, and it’s as long as three football fields.Read More
The state of Washington is setting new deadlines for cleanup at Hanford and the plutonium production site that contains a massive quantity of radioactive waste.Read More
At the Hanford Nuclear Site in southeastern Washington, and across the West, winter’s deep snow and a cool spring have produced lots of brush and grass. That’s a problem for the coming fire season. Read More
A worker at the Hanford Nuclear Site was recently contaminated with a speck of radioactive material after work in a lab building scheduled for demolition. Read More
Federal watchdogs are looking into all types of parts at a $17 billion construction project at the Hanford Nuclear Site. The Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Energy has found a sample of parts going into a large waste treatment plant at Hanford had problems.Read More
As nuclear and radioactive waste piles up, private companies are stepping in with their own solutions for the nation’s radioactive spent fuel. One is proposing a temporary storage site in New Mexico, and another is seeking a license for a site in Texas. But most experts agree that what’s needed is a permanent site, like Yucca Mountain, that doesn’t require humans to manage it.Read More
The project to stabilize and seal a large tunnel of radioactive waste has been completed at the Hanford nuclear reservation, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractor. The so-called Tunnel 2 project started in October 2018, at the massive Washington cleanup site near Richland.Read More
A new proposal from the Trump administration could dramatically change the way the government cleans up radioactive tank waste at Hanford. What does that mean? Anna King explains.Read More
The partial government shutdown is blocking some of important oversight at Hanford. In the past 10 years, the Environmental Protection Agency office in Richland has shrunk from nearly 10 experts working on Hanford issues to just three – including the top manager. Read More
In the middle of Hanford's desert, there’s a tunnel that stretches a third of a mile underground. Anna King got a first-of-its kind look at how work is progressing to prevent another collapse at one of the tunnels willed with radioactive waste.Read More
A fresh federal watchdog report about Hanford says after a major review, systemic fraud and inadequate oversight keep happening at the site, and it’s costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Read More
Many people drove as much as three hours to attend a rare public meeting about Hanford in Hood River Thursday night, Nov. 1. The common thread: concern about the Columbia River, and the health of their communities. Read More
Officials at the Hanford Nuclear Site ordered workers to stay indoors Friday morning as a precaution. They discovered steam rising from an unexpected part of a tunnel filled with highly contaminated waste. By mid-day, officials had announced they found no contamination.Read More
Federal and state energy regulators will hold back-to-back meetings in Portland and Seattle for a proposal to reclassify some of the high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Site.Read More
Work began this week to fill a roughly 1.3-mile-long tunnel with grout at the Hanford Nuclear Site. The tunnel is filled with highly hazardous radioactive waste.Read More
Another large tunnel of radioactive waste will be grouted closed at Hanford. That was the decision Friday by the Washington Department of Ecology. The long process goes back to when another tunnel, simply called Tunnel 1, partially collapsed in May 2017. Read More
The state of Washington has been after the federal government to keep Hanford cleanup workers from getting sick. On Wednesday, Sept. 19, they filed an agreement in federal court. Read More
Recently, several mayors in the Tri-Cities publicly called for Tunnel 2 to be filled in immediately. They’re worried a collapse of the tunnel could throw up a plume of dust exposing workers or the public.Read More
Northwest senators had a lot of questions for U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry during a Senate committee hearing Tuesday. They grilled him on the safety of steel in a massive treatment plant under construction at the Hanford nuclear site.Read More
The U.S. Department of Energy is demanding thousands of pages of documentation from one of its top contractors at Hanford. They want to know exactly what grade of steel is being used in a massive radioactive waste treatment plant at the decommissioned nuclear site. Read More
Prompt communication between workers and management at the Plutonium Finishing Plant did not occur, so radioactive waste continued to spread at Hanford. That’s according to a new report.Read More
Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation Wednesday, March 7 aimed at helping workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation. The law will allow workers who have been exposed to toxic chemicals or radioactive waste to more easily access compensation for medical treatment.Read More
Scott Leadingham, Northwest Public Broadcasting news manager, chats with Northwest News Network correspondent Anna King about the Tri-Cities and Hanford cleanup. King discusses recent news about Hanford and why it's so important to the region.Read More
As many as 11 workers may have ingested or inhaled radioactive contamination at the Plutonium Finishing Plant demolition site at Hanford. Ten workers are confirmed to have tested positive and one needs more testing to confirm the results.Read More
Reaction in the Northwest was swift to President Trump’s proposed cuts to the cleanup budget at the Hanford Site. The budget request cuts $61 million from the budget for Hanford's Office of River Protection, and $169 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Richland Operations Office.Read More
Washington health officials have penned an uncommonly stern letter to the U.S. Department of Energy. It details concerns over the radioactive contamination spread at a Hanford demolition site.Read More
Radioactive waste keeps spreading at a demolition site at Hanford. This week officials have found more contamination on a worker’s boot, on a work trailer and a personal vehicle. Now, a rental car that’s possibly contaminated has ended up in Spokane.Read More
Insitu uses engines built by Orbital Corporation to power its ScanEagle UAV. INSITU Listen Originally published Nov. 30, 2017 The unmanned aircraft industry cluster in the Columbia River Gorge is […]Read More
Insitu uses engines built by Orbital Corporation to power its ScanEagle UAV. INSITU Listen Story originally published Dec. 7, 2017 The U.S. Department of Energy is about start shoring […]Read More
Insitu uses engines built by Orbital Corporation to power its ScanEagle UAV. INSITU Story originally published Dec. 14, 2017 A half-dozen demolition workers may have been contaminated at the Hanford nuclear […]Read More
LISTEN A new report about the radioactive tank waste at Hanford says the cleanup could take decades longer and cost billions more than estimated. The document, called “System Plan 8”, proposes 11 complex scenarios […]Read More
TOBIN FRICKE / WIKIMEDIA – TINYURL.COM/H99DL7H Listen The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is one of the government watchdogs monitoring the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation. But recently the […]Read More
Sue Olson, 94, was a Manhattan Project era secretary at Hanford during World War II. She locked her filing drawer anytime she left her office. CREDIT KAI-HUEI YAU Listen […]Read More
Listen Originally published on October 1, 2015 In southeast Washington state, a group of farms has been frozen in time. It’s at Hanford, the area the federal government took over […]Read More
Zelma Maine Jackson says she’s the only African-American woman geologist perhaps for hundreds of miles. KAI-HUEI YAU This story was originally published AUG 4, 2015. In the West, there aren’t […]Read More
