Environment and Planning

Hanford Site

00000179-65ef-d8e2-a9ff-f5ef8d430000The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington was home to Native Americans and later to settlers. It turned into an top-secret military workhorse during World War II and the Cold War. Now, it’s one of the most pressing and complex environmental cleanup challenges humanity is facing in the world.This remote area in southeast Washington is where the federal government made plutonium for bombs during WWII and the Cold War. It’s now home to some of the most toxic contamination on earth, a witch’s brew of chemicals, radioactive waste and defunct structures. In central Hanford, leaking underground tanks full of radioactive sludge await a permanent solution. Meanwhile, a massive $12 billion waste treatment plant, designed to bind up that tank waste into more stable glass logs, has a troubled history.00000179-65ef-d8e2-a9ff-f5ef8d440000Anna King is public radio's correspondent in Richland, Washington, covering the seemingly endless complexities of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

EPA Fines Hanford For Stagnating Radioactive Waste Near Columbia River

NWNews | By Anna King

Published October 15, 2014 at 5:45 PM PDT

The Environmental Protection Agency intends to fine the U.S. Department of Energy up to $10,000 per week if radioactive waste just a stone's throw from the Columbia River isn’t cleaned up.

Behind the old called the K-West reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is a huge concrete swimming-pool-like basin. It was built in the 1950s and meant to last for 20 years. That’s where workers dumped hot irradiated rods until they cooled. Later they were shuttled off to be further refined into plutonium for bombs.

At the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, thousands of these rods were left behind in the water. TheDOE has been trying to clean up this waste for a while, but now the EPA says they are way behind schedule.

The EPA says the basin was supposed to be cleaned up back in 2002. The DOE says it hasn’t gotten enough funds from Congress to keep on schedule.

The Department of Energy has about two weeks to start negotiations, or face the weekly fine until cleanup starts.