Hanford

Amazon's push for small modular nuclear reactors is just the latest development in decadeslong fight over nuclear energy.

The Heritage Foundation’s blueprint proposes reclassifying radioactive waste as something less dangerous so it can be disposed of more cheaply.

Plans for cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation’s 56 million gallons of radioactive waste near Richland, WA are moving slowly forward. A public comment period for the latest plan ended this summer.

Bruce Bjornstad gives us a geologic tour from an outlook on the White Bluffs overlooking the Columbia River and Hanford.

The National Park Service runs three different sites related to the World War II Manhattan Project. The one on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington was the first full-scale nuclear reactor in the world. The B Reactor features hundreds of nozzles capping the metal process tubes on the reactor face and even a mint-green control room with all its 40s-era instrument panels. But it’s hearing about the human stories of struggle that make the history come alive. Sept. 26 marks 80 years since the B Reactor first went online. We get a tour from Terri Andre, a volunteer docent at the Manhattan Project National Historical Park at Hanford.

JJ Williams is the third-generation of his family in the wine business out of Red Mountain – one of the world’s premier vinicultural areas outside of Richland, Washington. But before the wine business, his family first put down roots in the Mid-Columbia region to work at Hanford. During the Manhattan Project, Williams’s great grandfather worked at the site, and then his grandfather worked on what’s called the Fast Flux Test Facility. It’s September now and crush is on – meaning that all the grapes are coming in to be pressed and fermented into wine at Kiona Vineyards. Williams recently got the distinction of being named in Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40. We sit down with him in our remote studio on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities.

The 56 million gallons of radioactive waste created from decades of plutonium enrichment at Hanford are stored in 177 massive, underground tanks on 18 different "farms" spread out over the 580 square miles of the nuclear reservation in Washington state. Most of the tanks are single-shelled, but 28 of them are double-shelled, which helps prevent waste from getting into the ground. Each tank holds between 55,000 and a million gallons of toxic waste.

Seattle poet Kathleen Flenniken grew up in Richland and worked as a civil engineer at Hanford in the 1980s. She served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. In her first year as poet laureate, she published a collection called Plume, which deals directly with how her Hanford area upbringing influenced her. The book explores the history of the site, the death of her best friend’s father from a radiation illness, and her childhood in “Atomic City.” Flenniken sits down with us from the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities.

We sit down with a Pacific Northwest National Lab scientist researching how glass can be used to safely bind up Hanford radioactive waste.

We get a first-hand tour of the Hanford Reach National Monument from the Washington Fish & Wildlife regional director for south central Washington.