Hanford: Endangering Fish, Water, and Life Along the Columbia River

By Alice Shieh

Hanford, a 570-square-mile nuclear complex in eastern Washington, has been described as having the worse contamination of any place in the Western hemisphere. Once the traditional wintering grounds of native peoples, the place now called Hanford was chosen by a U.S. military general to be the site of the world’s first large nuclear facility in 1943. (The native people were, of course, removed from the area to make room for the Hanford site.) Its location was ideal because of its close proximity to water and electricity—courtesy of the Columbia River. Between the years 1944 to 1947 alone, 638,000 curies of radiation were released. Robert Alvarez (2003) compares this figure to the incident at Three Mile Island, which only released 15 curies’ of radiation. In his article “The Legacy of Hanford,” he quotes a scientist who describes Hanford as containing enough hazardous material to “induce cancer in every person currently on the planet, 208 million times over.”


Massive dumping of contamination has occurred at Hanford since its inception. Over 440 billion gallons of liquid waste has been released into the ground at Hanford. About 100 million gallons of highly radioactive waste (resulting from the chemical separation of plutonium and uranium) have been stored in giant, leaking containers, buried beneath the ground at the site. Instead of respecting the fact that these materials are incredibly long-lived (nuclear waste, like diamonds, are forever), the federal government has attempted to redefine 75% of the waste at Hanford as “incidental.” The safest way to dispose of the waste, a process called vitrification where radioactive waste is converted into glass logs, is expensive, whereas “incidental” waste can be mixed with cement and buried in shallow pits directly in the ground—a much cheaper alternative.

Hanford downwinders have suffered (and continue to suffer) from serious health problems as a result of living downwind of Hanford’s contamination. Approximately 80% of Chinook salmon spawns in Hanford Reach and a study by the EPA and Native tribes found that “tribal children eating fish from the Hanford Reach have 100 times the risk of immune diseases and central nervous system disorders as non-Indian children. Risks of contracting cancer among tribal people from eating fish from this stretch of the river were estimated to be as high as 1 in 50” (Alvarez). Indeed, there is evidence now that hexavalent chromium—a carcinogen—from the Hanford site has spread into and contaminated the spawning beds of salmon.

Pacific northwesterners—native and non-native alike—appreciate the salmon as a food important to both Northwest culture and Northwest economy. When one thinks of foods local to Washington state, salmon is bound to come into mind. This is why Hanford’s pollution and its contamination of the salmon of Hanford Reach is an important issue for anybody interested in the local foods of the Pacific Northwest. That local people are being effectively poisoned by their local foods furthermore highlights the seriousness of the problem. Also, no food is more important or more local than water, and the water certainly is contaminated near Hanford. In fact, Hanford waste seeps into the Columbia River itself, which straddles the border between Washington and Oregon for hundreds of miles before spilling into the Pacific Ocean. Salmon is but one of the few things affected by Hanford.

The contamination at Hanford pollutes more than just the fish—the air, water, and soil are all affected. At present, Washington state governor Christine Gregoire has sued the federal government on the state’s behalf to speed up the Hanford cleanup effort (Seattle Times, November 28, 2008). (As attorney general of Washington state, she previously sued the federal government to prevent it from relocating even more nuclear waste from other sites to Hanford.) The Bush administration has attempted to siphon funds away from cleanup efforts at Hanford to help fund the War on Terror. One wonders, however, as Senator John Glenn did in 1988, "What good does it do to defend ourselves with nuclear weapons, if we poison our people in the process?" (qtd. in Alvarez).

Please visit http://www.hanfordwatch.org for more information.

LETHAL AND LEAKING

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References

Alvarez, Robert. (2003) The Legacy of Hanford. The Hanford Watch. Retrieved Nov 23, 2008 from http://www.hanfordwatch.org/archive/Legacy_of_Hanford.htm

Video retrieved from YouTube. (Part 2 is avalaible under the title Lethal and Leaking pt 2)

Feds, state must try harder to agree on Hanford cleanup. (Nov 28, 2008.) Seattle Times. Retrieved from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2008445404_edit28hanford.html