Hanford: What a Waste
America has a massive, unresolved waste problem at the Hanford Site in Washington with no clear end in sight
Over the past few years, I've often discussed, written about, and been photographed with nuclear waste. Almost every time, someone has asked, "What about Hanford?" either out of curiosity or as a rebuttal. For example, consider some of the online comments and tweets in response to my guest essay in the New York Times:
As for the author’s claim that there have been no consequential leaks of nuclear waste: Seriously? Been to Hanford in eastern Washington state lately?
I want to believe this. However, What about Hanford? I thought the site was super contaminated?
80 years later Hanford continues to be an expensive disaster while producing no energy.
In response, I defaulted to the standard answer from pro-nuclear advocates: Hanford waste is the result of nuclear weapon production, not nuclear power generation. The nuclear energy industry is separate, and the U.S. has a perfect record of managing and storing its spent nuclear fuel.
The anxiety and indignation surrounding Hanford are not surprising given how it has been characterized by politicians and journalists.
Gary Locke, former governor of Washington, warned that Hanford was “an underground Chernobyl waiting to happen”. Joshua Frank, author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America has written that it's "arguably, the most contaminated place on the entire planet". And just last year, The New York Times published a longform piece entitled, “A Poisonous Cold War Legacy That Defies a Solution”, explaining the land is “too polluted to ever be returned to public use”.
After receiving enough questions about Hanford, I decided the standard “Not my clown, not my monkeys, not my circus” answer was no longer good enough. If Hanford concerns are powerful enough to sway public opinion on nuclear energy, it's crucial to understand and discuss the site’s actual risks and status of cleanup.
A short history of Hanford
In December 1942 under the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, Manhattan Project scientists created the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction – something that had only been theorized before then.
With preliminary proof that such a feat was possible, the Project’s focus shifted to building reactors capable of producing weapons materials as quickly as possible. Urgency was fueled by fears of Nazi Germany's advancements in nuclear research. It was understood that whichever side developed a nuclear weapon first would have a massive advantage in the largest, deadliest war to date.
Hanford, Washington was selected as the site for building the world's first plutonium production reactors due to several factors:
The availability of the Columbia River for cooling the reactors
The Grand Coulee Dam as a reliable source of power
The vast amount of land available, far from densely populated areas and with a sparse local population
The mild climate and arid environment, including soil characteristics that would prevent liquid waste releases from immediately contaminating groundwater
Construction at Hanford began in February 1943 at an unprecedented pace. A mere 22 months after the initial experiment demonstrating sustained fission, the world's first high-power reactor “B Reactor” became operational. By 1945, Hanford had been fully transformed into a massive military and manufacturing complex.
After a temporary decline in production following the end of the war, operations at Hanford were expanded to meet the new demands of the Cold War. However, by 1963, the Atomic Energy Commission determined that the existing plutonium supply was sufficient and started retiring reactors. All weapons-only reactors shut down by 1971. The remaining "N" reactor, also capable of producing electricity, operated until 1987.
Although the secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project and Hanford site has fueled public mistrust and speculation, Hanford is ironically one of the most extensively documented and researched waste sites in the world. From the start, scientists systematically sampled and analyzed contamination in the air, surface and groundwater, soils, vegetation, foods, and wildlife. These men and women were venturing into a completely new field and naturally wanted to collect as much data as possible.
Environmental monitoring and data collection only intensified as a result of the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement. This agreement established a comprehensive framework for cleanup and mandated rigorous oversight by the DOE, EPA, and Washington State Department of Ecology.
This means there is plenty of evidence to thoroughly assess the environmental and health risks from Hanford, covering both past operations and future exposures. It does not take much digging to discover that the gulf between public and scientific understanding of Hanford is enormous.
Environmental Impact of Hanford
Concerns have been raised about Hanford's past and present effects on the local environment, especially regarding the Columbia River.
Nearly 50 species of fish inhabit the Hanford Reach, the stretch of the river near the site, including chinook, sockeye, and coho salmon and steelhead trout. Many of these fish use the Reach as a migration route to spawning areas upstream. A review of the challenges at Hanford published in 1993 found “an extensive series of assessment studies have revealed no evidence of significant effects from Hanford operations on anadromous fish”.
In fact, the number of salmon nests constructed in the Hanford Reach actually increased “dramatically”. That’s because it is the last remaining free-flowing, non-tidal section of the Columbia River in the United States. The existence of the complex protected this part of the River from dams and reservoirs, meaning it has retained its natural characteristics.
Now, the Hanford Reach is considered a vital habitat for the survival and recovery of salmon and trout populations. In recognition of its ecological importance, it was designated as a National Monument by President Bill Clinton in 2000.
It turns out, Hanford has been a boon rather than a burden for local wildlife on the actual site as well. Given much of the site has been restricted from public access and has remained free from agricultural use, it serves as a refuge for a variety of native plants and animals. Populations of elk, mule deer, coyotes, Canada geese, great blue herons, and bald eagles have all grown under the protection of Hanford.
Hanford has become invaluable for conservation and ecological research because it contains the only Washington steppe land in nearly pristine condition. In 1967, the Air Lands Ecology Reserve (ALE) was established as an outdoor laboratory on part of the site to study the undisturbed ecosystem of Rattlesnake Mountain. In 1977, the entirety of the Hanford site was dedicated as a National Environmental Research Park. In the 1990s, both the Department of Energy and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory signed agreements with The Nature Conservancy to study local plant and animal life.
Ironically, habitat destruction could be an unintended consequence of site cleanup. As mentioned above, much of eastern Washington is used for agriculture. Remediation could very well lead to the site becoming farmland, severely affecting Hanford’s wildlife and the land’s value as an ecological research area. In fact, agricultural runoff could have a greater impact on water quality and fish in the Columbia River than Hanford operations ever did.
So not only is there a lack of evidence that Hanford operations caused harm to the surrounding environment – it actually protected and preserved the remaining parcel of this unique ecosystem.
Health Impacts of Hanford
Ever since Hanford’s purpose was revealed to the public, adverse health outcomes have been attributed to radiation released during operations, including cancers. Locals have dubbed the neck scar left behind from thyroid surgery "the Hanford Necklace”.
Thyroid cancer is associated with nuclear due to the release of radioactive iodine during nuclear energy accidents, or in this case Hanford operations. People in the communities surrounding Hanford could have been exposed to radiation by breathing in the air, consuming local crops, and drinking milk from cows pastured downwind of Hanford. Iodine-131 is readily absorbed and concentrated within the thyroid gland, which has the potential to cause radiation-induced damage and increase the likelihood of thyroid cancer.
In 1988, Congress mandated an epidemiologic study of thyroid disease in people exposed to radioactive iodine from Hanford during the period of highest releases – 1944 through 1957. This time frame includes the secret “Green Run” experiment conducted in 1949. A large amount of radioactive iodine was intentionally released into the atmosphere to test methods for detecting Soviet nuclear weapons production. The resulting Hanford Thyroid Disease Study (HTDS) conducted by the CDC and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center was published in 2002. The study found no associations between Hanford’s releases and thyroid disease of any kind, including cancer.
There are also persistent fears of radiation exposure from contamination in the Columbia River. Water from the river was funneled to Hanford to cool its reactors, then returned without treatment. People could have been exposed to radioactive pollutants by drinking river water, eating fish or water fowl, or participating in recreational activities like swimming or boating.
The Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction (HEDR) Project’s Columbia River Pathway Report estimated radiation exposure from the Columbia River between 1964 and 1966, the period of highest exposure probability. The study found that the 99th percentile dose – an individual who drank untreated river water and ate 200 meals of fish caught in the areas with the highest concentrations of radioactive contaminants – was 230 mrem over the course of two years.
For context, a whole body CT scan delivers 1,000 mrem of dose in less than a minute, often just seconds. The report concluded “It is therefore likely that few, if any, people in the Tri-Cities received cumulative doses from the river pathway that were higher than the annual average background.” In other words, it is unlikely that anyone received radiation doses from the water higher than the average person in Richland receives from simply living on a naturally radioactive planet.
Studies like the one cited in the New York Times article to link Hanford operations to “thyroid, reproductive and nervous system tumors'' are frankly bad science. This particular study was based on community health surveys, meaning there is no actual carcinogenic data, concentration nor dose. It also claims "a synergistic effect may exist with agricultural toxins”, meaning it did not attempt to explore confounding effects of other carcinogens, like pesticides. This seems like a significant omission given much of the surrounding region is known for its extensive farming and agricultural activities.
This is not to say that these cancers are not real – they most certainly are. But there is no evidence that these or any other health impacts are the result of the operations at Hanford.
Perhaps the clearest evidence of the lack of danger to the public is the lack of adverse health outcomes for those who were most exposed to Hanford operations – the site’s workers. Although the average radiation dose to workers was well below the U.S. limit for occupational exposure, there were several instances where workers received high doses from accidental acute exposures.
Yet an analysis of mortality of workers at the Hanford Site shows “death rates substantially below those of the general U.S. population”. Further, the study published in Health Physics found “no evidence of a positive correlation of radiation exposure and mortality from all cancers combined or of mortality from leukemia”.
Current and Future Exposures
By 1991, the dose of radiation to someone living within 50 miles of Hanford was less than 0.01 mrem per year. That’s roughly the dose equivalent of eating a single banana.
Recent surveys of radiation levels found most measurements at the river’s shoreline and across the site were at or near local background radiation levels. The “hot spots” all measured below the average background radiation level of Finland. Simply put, it’s just another spot on our radioactive Earth.
Hanford is completely safe and becomes even more so with each passing day. That’s the nature of radiation: exposure risk diminishes over time as radioactive materials decay exponentially and their emission of potentially harmful radiation decreases.
The main source of anxiety is the underground tanks of radioactive waste at the center of the Hanford site. Fortunately starting in the 1970s, the liquid waste from the tanks was extracted and processed. Fission products, namely cesium-137 and strontium-90, were removed and transferred into capsules to reduce the temperature and radioactivity of the remaining waste. The capsules, currently submerged in large pools of water, will soon be transferred to dry casks — the same type used successfully for decades to store spent nuclear fuel from U.S. reactors.
Since the remaining strontium and cesium have undergone one to two half-lives since extraction, the radioactivity in the tanks continues to decline. About 45% of the radioactivity has decayed since 1996 without treatment. This remaining "high-level waste" now meets the NRC's concentration criteria for low-level waste, which can be disposed of in licensed landfills. Further, this waste is a peanut-butter-like sludge, meaning it’s too slow and viscous to travel off site, let alone make it to the river.
Still, it’s estimated that one million gallons of radioactive liquids have leaked from some of the tanks. While most of this liquid has been absorbed in the upper layers of soil, some radioactive contaminants have leached into the groundwater beneath the site. Although travel will take decades (if not centuries and millennia for some contaminants), and concentrations will continue to decline with time and dilution, there is no way to guarantee that contaminants will not reach the river.
This scenario – leaked liquid waste making its way into the water table and to the Columbia River – is the primary concern and main motivation behind the extensive cleanup efforts. This raises the question: what happens if nothing is done?
As a part of the environmental impact statement of Hanford cleanup, the Department of Energy modeled a “no action” scenario: the tanks full of toxic sludge would be left untouched, and the contaminants in the groundwater would eventually make their way to the river.
The report estimated the year of maximum dose would be nearly 3000 years into the future — the year 4978. If a person living at that time were to use the Columbia River as his or her source of drinking water, he or she could be expected to receive a dose of 4 mrem per year. That is the dose equivalent of a single flight from Los Angeles to New York City.
If instead, water was sourced from a well in the central area of the site where the most hazardous radioactive and chemical waste is concentrated, the estimated year of maximum exposure would be year 4313 – a mere 2,300 years into the future. Drinking this water over the course of a year could result in a dose of 59 mrem.
This is slightly less than the average annual dose for workers in West Java, Indonesia’s main destination for hot spring tourism (funny how radiation is bad until it comes from a hot spring – then it’s restorative and healing). In fact, it is well below the 100 mrem per year exposure limit set by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the general public.
Current efforts at Hanford will save zero lives, prevent zero injuries, avoid zero cancers, and protect against zero environmental damage. The 1993 report by the Office of Hanford Environment, in collaboration with Pacific Northwest Laboratory, questioned the need for cleanup efforts:
“The lack of consistency among actual exposures (usually zero), potential exposures, and environmental regulation, coupled with high cost, has caused both scientists and the public to question the wisdom of some cleanup initiatives. The possibility of exposure now or in the future is so low at some sites that knowledgeable critics are asking: Why should expensive cleanup and remediation efforts even be undertaken?” (emphasis added)
Yet in the three decades since that report was published, Hanford cleanup costs have continued to increase dramatically, and the timeline for completion has extended further into the future.
A Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
The public’s anxieties about Hanford and its desire for cleanup are entirely understandable. For decades, officials, government organizations, special interest groups, and the media have portrayed it as extremely contaminated wasteland causing harm that will worsen with time. Given the clear evidence of Hanford's current and improving safety, one might expect these groups to ease public fears and advocate for responsible project management and spending. At the very least, they could choose not to highlight the issue and let it fade.
Instead, all parties appear to be reinforcing fears and amplifying imaginary threats. The issue stems from a system of perverse incentives: all of the aforementioned parties benefit from perpetuating the perception of Hanford as an enduring environmental catastrophe.
Local officials favor on-going cleanup efforts because they create jobs for their constituents. Employment linked to Hanford constitutes the primary source of jobs in the Tri-Cities area. Every job funded by federal dollars supports two jobs in the surrounding communities according to Ajsa Suljic, a regional labor economist for the Washington State Employment Security Department. “The whole community benefits substantially, regardless of whether you’re a car dealership in Pasco, a restaurant in West Richland, or a real estate agent in south Kennewick,” explained David Reeploeg, vice president for federal programs at the Tri-City Development Council (TRIDEC).
Further, suggesting that clean up could be massively scaled back would likely be viewed with consternation and outrage from surrounding communities who have been convinced that the site is incredibly toxic. Rather than risk their positions by attempting to alleviate fear, politicians are happy to have a moral high horse they can capitalize to win elections and try to extract more for their communities.
Ever-expanding remediation efforts also create juicy financial opportunities for government contractors, federal and state agencies, and the national labs. In 2024, more than $8 billion of the Department of Energy’s budget was devoted to cleanup of radioactive material. $3.05 billion of that was allocated to Hanford. Though the Department’s own data and analyses that reveal how unnecessary cleanup is, they've built a fundraising strategy around Hanford being dangerous indefinitely.
Anti-nuclear organizations are thrilled to point to the spending and growing complexity of Hanford as a way to lambaste nuclear power. Nevermind that the waste at Hanford had nothing to do with the commercial nuclear power industry; activists intentionally blur the distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy to create confusion. They want Hanford to be an expensive, unresolved issue not because there are people or wildlife to protect, but because of the damage they think it can do to a vital source of carbon-free power.
While Hanford clean up is guided in part by regulatory compliance laws, much of the spending and decision-making is being driven by politics, public fear, and perverse incentives rather than by actual risk. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone: the ongoing efforts create a continuous cycle of funding, jobs, and bureaucratic activity. Since there is nothing tangible to resolve, progress is arbitrary. Therefore unlimited time and spending can be justified.
The Real Waste of Hanford
In March, President Biden released his budget request for 2025, which upped Hanford spending to $3.1 billion. The Government Accountability Office estimates that the final price tag of Hanford cleanup will be between $300 billion and $640 billion, and will take another 70 years to complete.
This is the true waste of Hanford: the billions of dollars that are continually spent, the hundreds of millions of man-hours expended, and the attention and talent of scientists at our national labs squandered.
Once the cesium and strontium capsules are in dry, passive storage, it becomes hard to justify further action. If we feel the need to do something to scratch a spiritual itch, the Department of Energy has proposed a "grout in place" scenario. This involves pouring cement-like material over the waste to seal it off and immobilize it. If we are looking for religious ways to put people to work and spend our surpluses beyond that, we can copy the Egyptians and put a pyramid on top of the site.
Instead of wasting taxpayer money on cleaning up massively-exaggerated messes or building pyramids, those resources could be put to more productive use. The allocated funds and effort could be put toward developing new technologies like carbon-neutral aviation fuels or repairing and replacing our crumbling infrastructure. Or it could be used to deploy clean energy.
Even at the eye-watering cost of Vogtle 3 and 4, $640 billion could replace half of the country’s coal generation with carbon-free nuclear power. At $16 billion per pair of reactors (MIT estimates the AP1000 could get as low as $13.6 billion per pair), all of the nation’s coal-fired electricity generation could be replaced.
It’s clear that there is money for big projects in the Department of Energy’s budget. It’s also clear that the cities and local communities enjoy the economic opportunities that big government spending has afforded them. There are many possibilities for Hanford’s future. Shamefully, we are wasting it on harmless waste.