As President Donald Trump prepared to leave office, his Department of Energy was celebrating that a new analytical lab was “ready to operate” at the Hanford Site in southeast Washington. Continue Reading Hanford Waste Still On The Read More
David Bowen has owned his own bar in Cle Elum, been a Kittitas County commissioner and managed groundwater nitrate cleanup in the Yakima Valley. Now, he’ll hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable for its cleanup at the site using the Tri-Party Agreement. That’s a 1989 document struck between Ecology, the federal Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Read More
By 1950, 20% of Pasco’s approximately 10,000 residents were Black, almost all living in slum conditions. Few lived in the new atomic community of Richland and none in “lily-white” Kennewick -- a fact of which Kennewick city leaders and police at the time were proud. Not only was housing segregated, but Black residents were forced to endure broad discrimination in Read More
Under the settlement, Bechtel Corp. and Aecom will pay nearly $58 million over allegations from current or former Hanford employees. The workers said they were retaliated against for blowing the whistle over how labor hours were billed. Read More
It's been 75 years since the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks to Koko Kondo, who was an infant when one of those bombs was dropped on Hiroshima. Continue Reading An Atomic Bomb Survivor On Her Journey From Read More
Denin Koch's trip to the Hanford B Reactor when he was 19 stirred his musical passion. It eventually inspired a full jazz album exploring the complicated history of Hanford, 75 years after the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan ended WWII. Read More
Hackers working with the Chinese government targeted firms developing vaccines for the coronavirus and stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of intellectual property and trade secrets from companies across the world, the Justice Department said Tuesday as it announced criminal charges. Read More
The report from the independent Government Accountability Office says the U.S. Department of Energy has not found the root causes of the partial collapse of the waste-storage tunnel, and that failures in DOE’s investigation, inspections and maintenance of other aging and contaminated facilities is concerning. Read More
From 1949 to 1989, the massive plant’s job was to turn caustic liquids containing plutonium into solid plutonium “buttons,” as they were known. The finished buttons were about the size of hockey pucks and were used for America’s nuclear weapons. Read More
Washington Department of Ecology leaders say without access to this data, they can’t effectively protect the land, air and water for residents in eastern Washington and surrounding communities. They say they’ve attempted to negotiate this issue with federal Energy managers for years. Read More
At Hanford, in southeastern Washington, contractors have just completed much of the demo work at the site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. But now crews have to finish the job. And that’s the tough part. Continue Reading Read More
As the country's 14th secretary of energy, Perry leads an agency he once vowed to eliminate. He has emerged as a central figure in the impeachment inquiry of Trump. Continue Reading Energy Secretary Rick Perry To Resign; Read More
The creators of a new musical work called “Nuclear Dreams” highlight the dreams and nightmares of people who work and live near Hanford in Washington’s Tri-Cities. Continue Reading Oratorio Performed Inside Read More
An astonishing array of animals and habitats flourished on six obsolete weapons complexes — mostly for nuclear or chemical arms — because the sites banned the public and other intrusions for decades. Continue Reading Wildlife Read More
A wildfire continued burning today near the Hanford Nuclear Site. The Cold Creek Fire is burning sensitive, federally protected habitat. As of Friday afternoon it was estimated at about 18,000 acres and 10 percent containment. Read More
A new federal report says that a massive building at the Hanford Nuclear Site is worse off than managers thought. The so-called PUREX -- Plutonium Uranium Extraction -- plant isn’t clean. Starting in 1956 the plant processed loads of plutonium. Its walls are up to 6 feet thick, and it’s as long as three football fields. Read More
The state of Washington is setting new deadlines for cleanup at Hanford and the plutonium production site that contains a massive quantity of radioactive waste. Continue Reading Washington State Sets New Deadlines For Hanford Waste CleanupRead More
At the Hanford Nuclear Site in southeastern Washington, and across the West, winter’s deep snow and a cool spring have produced lots of brush and grass. That’s a problem for the coming fire season. Continue Reading Big Spring Read More
A worker at the Hanford Nuclear Site was recently contaminated with a speck of radioactive material after work in a lab building scheduled for demolition. Continue Reading Worker At Hanford Contaminated In Lab Scheduled For DemolitionRead More
Federal watchdogs are looking into all types of parts at a $17 billion construction project at the Hanford Nuclear Site. The Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Energy has found a sample of parts going into a large waste treatment plant at Hanford had problems. Read More
As nuclear and radioactive waste piles up, private companies are stepping in with their own solutions for the nation’s radioactive spent fuel. One is proposing a temporary storage site in New Mexico, and another is seeking a license for a site in Texas. But most experts agree that what’s needed is a permanent site, like Yucca Mountain, that doesn’t require humans to manage Read More
The project to stabilize and seal a large tunnel of radioactive waste has been completed at the Hanford nuclear reservation, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractor. The so-called Tunnel 2 project started in October 2018, at the massive Washington cleanup site near Richland. Read More
On April 1, scientists will officially restart their search for gravitational waves after a year spent making improvements to massive twin detectors. Discoveries should soon start rolling in, and when they do, there's a good chance the news will be translated into a Native American language called Blackfoot, or Siksika. Read More
PHOTO: Anna King interviewing Jane Hedges, the now-retired head of Washington Ecology’s Hanford office. Hedges grew up swimming off the docks in Richland, but only understood the massive scope of the cleanup needed at Hanford later in life. CREDIT: Kai-Huei Yau / Daughters of Hanford You’ve heard Tri-Cities correspondent Anna King on the radio for years,… Read More
The federal government recently doled out two “green findings” to the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear reactor. The Columbia Generating Station, near Richland, is run by the utility Energy Northwest. Green findings are the lowest infractions for the nuclear industry, but it’s not the only time the plant’s been in trouble. Read More
A new proposal from the Trump administration could dramatically change the way the government cleans up radioactive tank waste at Hanford. What does that mean? Anna King explains. Continue Reading Explainer: Feds Want To Read More
The partial government shutdown is blocking some of important oversight at Hanford. In the past 10 years, the Environmental Protection Agency office in Richland has shrunk from nearly 10 experts working on Hanford issues to just three – including the top manager. Read More
In the middle of Hanford's desert, there’s a tunnel that stretches a third of a mile underground. Anna King got a first-of-its kind look at how work is progressing to prevent another collapse at one of the tunnels willed with radioactive waste. Read More
A fresh federal watchdog report about Hanford says after a major review, systemic fraud and inadequate oversight keep happening at the site, and it’s costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Continue Reading Read More
Many people drove as much as three hours to attend a rare public meeting about Hanford in Hood River Thursday night, Nov. 1. The common thread: concern about the Columbia River, and the health of their communities. Continue Read More
Officials at the Hanford Nuclear Site ordered workers to stay indoors Friday morning as a precaution. They discovered steam rising from an unexpected part of a tunnel filled with highly contaminated waste. By mid-day, officials had announced they found no contamination. Read More
Federal and state energy regulators will hold back-to-back meetings in Portland and Seattle for a proposal to reclassify some of the high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Site. Continue Reading State And Federal Regulators Read More
Keeping the Columbia River safe is at the core of several public meetings scheduled for Seattle and Portland next week. It all has to do with decisions being made hundreds of miles away in the desert at Hanford. The question regulators are tacking: How do you keep a mostly-empty radioactive waste tank safe for hundreds, thousands even a million years? Read More
Work began this week to fill a roughly 1.3-mile-long tunnel with grout at the Hanford Nuclear Site. The tunnel is filled with highly hazardous radioactive waste. Continue Reading Works Starts On Read More
Another large tunnel of radioactive waste will be grouted closed at Hanford. That was the decision Friday by the Washington Department of Ecology. The long process goes back to when another tunnel, simply called Tunnel 1, partially collapsed in May 2017. Read More
Last week, the state of Washington, a Hanford union and a Hanford watchdog organization said they have tentatively settled a three-year old lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy over workers being made sick from toxic vapors from Hanford’s underground tanks. Read More
The state of Washington has been after the federal government to keep Hanford cleanup workers from getting sick. On Wednesday, Sept. 19, they filed an agreement in federal court. Continue Reading Feds And Washington State Sign Fresh Read More
The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge sits on more than 5,000 acres of trees, wetlands and pristine rolling prairie about 16 miles northwest of Denver. It hosts 239 migratory and resident species, from falcons and elk to the threatened Preble's meadow jumping mouse. It also used to be the site of a federal nuclear weapons facility — and it's reopening to the public this Read More
Since the late 1980s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been keeping track of big polluters through their Toxic Waste Inventory or TRI. The EPA has released their latest data for 2017. We crunched some numbers for Washington, and here are the results. Read More
Recently, several mayors in the Tri-Cities publicly called for Tunnel 2 to be filled in immediately. They’re worried a collapse of the tunnel could throw up a plume of dust exposing workers or the public. Continue Reading Meetings Seek Read More
Three major wildfires are burning in central Washington near the Columbia River in Kittitas and Grant counties. And the fires could make getting to a big three-day Phish concert at the Gorge Amphitheater more difficult. Continue Read More
In 1943, the Hanford Site was selected as the newest location for the top-secret Manhattan Project and began 75 years of innovation, discovery and leadership. To honor this legacy and the continued work at Hanford, Leidos will host panelists from Hanford’s past and present to share stories and discuss the evolution of this secret city.… Read More
A federal watchdog agency said Wednesday that it's hard to prove that Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant is safe. Continue Reading Federal Report Says Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant Construction Still In QuestionRead More
A Yakama Nation leader, Russell Jim, has died. The 82-year-old was well-known by tribes and environmentalists across the nation for his fight to clean up Hanford. Continue Reading Yakama Nation Environmental Leader Russell Jim Dies At Age 82Read More
The U.S. Department of Energy is launching a federal investigation into a demolition site at the Hanford nuclear reservation where radioactive waste from the site has been spreading in unexplained ways. Continue Reading Feds To Investigate Contamination Read More
In Central Washington, Grant Public Utility District officials have declared what they’re calling a “non-failure emergency” at the 1950’s-era Priest Rapids Dam northwest of Richland on the Columbia River. Continue Reading Read More
Northwest senators had a lot of questions for U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry during a Senate committee hearing Tuesday. They grilled him on the safety of steel in a massive treatment plant under construction at the Hanford nuclear site. Read More
The U.S. Department of Energy is demanding thousands of pages of documentation from one of its top contractors at Hanford. They want to know exactly what grade of steel is being used in a massive radioactive waste treatment plant at the decommissioned nuclear site. Read More
Prompt communication between workers and management at the Plutonium Finishing Plant did not occur, so radioactive waste continued to spread at Hanford. That’s according to a new report. Continue Reading Report: Poor Read More
Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation Wednesday, March 7 aimed at helping workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation. The law will allow workers who have been exposed to toxic chemicals or radioactive waste to more easily access compensation for medical treatment. Read More
