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
Keeping the Columbia River safe is at the core of several public meetings scheduled for Seattle and Portland next week. It all has to do with decisions being made hundreds of miles away in the desert at Hanford. The question regulators are tacking: How do you keep a mostly-empty radioactive waste tank safe for hundreds, thousands even a million years? 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
Last week, the state of Washington, a Hanford union and a Hanford watchdog organization said they have tentatively settled a three-year old lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy over workers being made sick from toxic vapors from Hanford’s underground tanks.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
The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge sits on more than 5,000 acres of trees, wetlands and pristine rolling prairie about 16 miles northwest of Denver. It hosts 239 migratory and resident species, from falcons and elk to the threatened Preble's meadow jumping mouse. It also used to be the site of a federal nuclear weapons facility — and it's reopening to the public this Read More
Since the late 1980s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been keeping track of big polluters through their Toxic Waste Inventory or TRI. The EPA has released their latest data for 2017. We crunched some numbers for Washington, and here are the results. 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
Three major wildfires are burning in central Washington near the Columbia River in Kittitas and Grant counties. And the fires could make getting to a big three-day Phish concert at the Gorge Amphitheater more difficult.Read More
In 1943, the Hanford Site was selected as the newest location for the top-secret Manhattan Project and began 75 years of innovation, discovery and leadership. To honor this legacy and […]Read More
A federal watchdog agency said Wednesday that it's hard to prove that Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant is safe. Read More
A Yakama Nation leader, Russell Jim, has died. The 82-year-old was well-known by tribes and environmentalists across the nation for his fight to clean up Hanford.Read More
The U.S. Department of Energy is launching a federal investigation into a demolition site at the Hanford nuclear reservation where radioactive waste from the site has been spreading in unexplained ways.Read More
In Central Washington, Grant Public Utility District officials have declared what they’re calling a “non-failure emergency” at the 1950’s-era Priest Rapids Dam northwest of Richland on the Columbia River.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
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Eugene Astley Northwest Public Television and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Bob Ferguson Northwest Public Television and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]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
The National Academy of Sciences is conducting days of meetings in Richland, Washington, this week. On the agenda is what to do with a lot of liquid radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Site.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
Hanford workers have called a “stop work” at a demolition site over worries of radioactive contamination inside government vehicles. It’s the same site where government contractors have struggled to tame the spread of contamination all winter. 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
The discovery of high levels of radon gas has forced more than 100 workers at Hanford to move their offices. This follows a series of radioactive contamination issues at that same demolition project on the southeast Washington nuclear site.Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY James Anderson Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Robert Heinman Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Barbara Brown Tayler Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Catherine Borden Finley Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Steve Buckingham Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Virginia Sather Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Mary Esther Lippold Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY C.J. Mitchell Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY William T. Tyler Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during […]Read More
OUR HANFORD HISTORY Gordon Kaas Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Hanford History Partnership produced a series of stories from people who lived and worked in the Richland area during the […]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
The main processing facility at Hanford’s Plutonium Finishing Plant was demolished from October 10-15, 2017. HANFORD PLATEAU / YOUTUBE – HTTPS://TINYURL.COM/YCPS75QW Listen UPDATE: Dec. 21, 2017: The Department of […]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
After nearly two decades of work, contractors at Hanford have just finished cleaning out the first of 177 radioactive waste tanks. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Listen A major milestone […]Read More
Hanford’s Tunnel 1 has been grouted up to protect the public from further collapse at the southeast nuclear site. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Listen Remember the old train tunnel that […]Read More
On Aug. 17, 2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo detected, for the first time, gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars. Photo credit: Caltech […]Read More