Hanford: Mother of all toxic waste cleanups

A nuclear fuel rod disintegrates underwater during the ongoing environmental cleanup at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. The radioactive sludge created in this incident is part of 53 million gallons of radioactive goo stored at the decommissioned plutonium factory. There are thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods stored at Hanford. /U.S. Department of Energy images

Shuttering the world's first plutonium factory is a deadly serious job. And it comes with a $112 billion price tag.

Plutonium, which was produced from uranium-fired reactors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation during and after World War II to make nuclear weapons, is among the most toxic substances known to science.
- Plutonium is most dangerous when inhaled.
- Once lodged in lung tissue, plutonium particles can kill lung cells, leading to scarring and terminal cancer.
- Plutonium can enter the bloodstream through the lungs. Plutonium circulating in blood concentrates in the liver, spleen and bones, where it causes cancer.
- Plutonium is produced when an atom of uranium-235 is fissioned, or broken, in a nuclear power plant reactor.

Uranium is also hazardous. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control list the following symptoms from radioactive uranium exposure: "dermatitis; kidney damage; blood changes; [potential occupational carcinogen]; in animals: lung, lymph node damage. Potential for cancer is a result of alpha-emitting properties and radioactive decay products (e.g., radon and plutonium)."               

Here are some U.S. Department of Energy images from the ongoing cleanup effort at Hanford:

Racks for locked plutonium deliveries to U.S. nuclear bomb plants have been dismantled as part of the cleanup of the Vault, a complex of a half-dozen structures next to Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant (X marks the spot below). /Department of Energy images

An excavator places barrels for collection of toxic materials at "618-10 Burial Ground," one of the most hazardous sites at Hanford. /Department of Energy image

A welder installs a cap on one of the new radioactive waste storage cannisters at Hanford. Nearly 400 of the Multi-Cannister Overpacks are housing thousands of spent, fragmented or unused nuclear fuel rods. The cannisters are designed to hold the fuel rods until a U.S. nuclear waste depository is established. /Department of Energy images

The Mobile Arm Retrieval System is designed to help empty more than 100 single-hulled radioactive waste storage tanks at Hanford. MARS, shown above in a DOE test, uses pressurized water to loosen sludge and tar-like waste for removal, speeding the cleanup process. Tank T-111 is reportedly leaking as much as 300 gallons of material per year./Department of Energy images

 



As part of the cocooning effort at Hanford's N Reactor building, a new roof is installed to seal and waterproof the structure. The N Reactor produced plutonium and generated more the 65 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity from 1963 to 1987. The building will be sealed for 75 years, then radiation levels should be low enough for cleanup and dismantling work to continue. /Department of Energy image

In August 2011, the DOE removed "D10 Tank" from the U Plant, the first of Hanford's five plutonium processing plants slated to attain "remediated" status. The 7-foot-tall, 15,000-pound tank contained dangerously radioactive materials. A heavy-duty tractor-trailer removed D10 Tank from the U Plant building. /Department of Energy images

The D10 Tank was removed from the U Plant's "Canyon," a cavernous space designed at several Hanford plutonium processing buildings for harvesting plutonium from uranium fuel rods. The image above shows the U Plant Canyon before all processing equipment was removed. The image below shows the stripped facility. /Department of Energy images