Nuclear Waste

A two-month study at Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant is testing emission controls on a new stack, using chemical simulants to ensure safety and compliance before treating radioactive waste. The goal: protect health and environment ahead of full-scale operations.

A conservative policy roadmap — and past actions from the new president's first term — could offer clues as to what he might have in store for one of the most radioactive places in the world.

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

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.

We’ve talked a lot this week about life and work specifically at Hanford, but not all of the waste stayed there. In the rush to process plutonium at Hanford, plant operators expelled radioactive byproducts into the local atmosphere and waterways. People who were affected by these radioactive toxins call themselves “Downwinders.” Northwest Public Broadcasting senior correspondent Anna King, who has been reporting on Hanford for over 20 years, joins us to talk about the people who were affected by radiation from the Hanford site in previous decades.

Long before the Hanford nuclear reservation, the land was home to Native American tribes. The Yakama Nation has strong ties to Laliik — or Rattlesnake Mountain — and Gable Mountain on the Hanford cleanup site. They are religious sites for the Tribes, and the whole area is ceded land for the Yakama Nation. The lands around Hanford were also used for village sites, gathering, fishing, hunting and social celebrations. But the Tribes were forced off their lands during World War II, and only in the past year have they been able to start to return to hunt and gather there. The Nation is trying to educate its youth and fully lean into being part of the formal efforts to clean up the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored on the site.

A new federal tool called TRAC is helping lawmakers, tribal nations and even watchdogs see how contamination is moving underground in southeastern Washington.

As Japan plans to release treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea this summer, concerned South Koreans are stocking up on sea salt.

The U.S. Department of Energy has confirmed that two underground structures at the decommissioned Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state have been stabilized after they were deemed at risk of collapsing and spreading radioactive contamination into the air

Federal and state energy regulators will hold back-to-back meetings in Portland on Tuesday for a proposal to reclassify some of the high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford Site in Washington.