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Hanford site selected
- Approximately 1,500 residents, both settlers and Indigenous people, are forced out of the region
- First large-scale nuclear reactor ever built
- Fewer than 1% of workers knew what they were building
- Used for plutonium production for Manhattan Project
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Early Contamination (1944 -1951)
- A report by the U.S. government estimated that 25,300 TBq of iodine-131 had been released into the river and air from the Hanford site
- Low-level wastes and cooling water from the plants were distributed by open ditch to surface ponds for evaporation and percolation into the ground.
- Local community exposures through consumption of local produce or milk from contaminated animals
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Plutonium production ramps up (1945 - 1969)
- Nine weapons reactors
- Five reprocessing plants
- 177 underground waste tanks
- Hundreds of research and support buildings
- Contamination events continue but are not revealed to the public
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Atomic bombs
- Trinity test and bombing of Nagasaki
- The bombs contain plutonium produced at Hanford
- Purpose of Hanford site publicly revealed after Nagasaki bombing
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Green Run
- Released as a 200 by 40-mile plume over a 12-hour period
- 200 to 440 TBq of iodine-131
- At least 740 TBq of xenon-133
- Accounted for 2.3% of total I-131 released from 1944-1951
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Harold McCluskey exposure incident
- Exposed to at least 37 MBq of americium-241 and nitric acid
- Died in 1987 of heart disease
- At the time of his death he had 55 kBq of americium in his soft tissues (27.9 kBq in the liver), 470 kBq in the mineral surfaces of the bones, and 20 kBq in his bone marrow
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End of plutonium production
- Produced about 74 tons of plutonium
- 60 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium
- Supplied most of the 60,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
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Discovery of Leaking storage tanks
- Six single-shelled tanks filled with radioactive liquid and sludge
- Some leaking 300 - 500 gallons of waste per year
- Risk of contamination of groundwater and Columbia River
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Last Reactor Cocooned
- Remain sealed for 75 years to allow radiation to decay
- Hanford Reach National Monument established in 2000 and composes most of the former security buffer
- B Reactor open for tours!
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Estimated completion of cleanup
- 134 years after first reactor start up
- 90+ years after end of production
- Projected to cost up to $640 billion