12 Facts About Hanford Site

Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U S state of Washington.

Nuclear technology developed rapidly during this period, and Hanford Site scientists produced major technological achievements.

Weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, and the Hanford Site became the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.

Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles —roughly equivalent to half of the total area of Rhode Island—within Benton County, Washington.

Matthias reported to Groves that the Hanford site was "far more favorable in virtually all respects than any other"; the survey party wrote up its full report on the train journey back to Washington, D C They were particularly impressed by the fact that a high-voltage power line from Grand Coolee Dam to Bonneville Dam ran through the site, and there was an electrical substation on its edge.

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Until news arrived of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, fewer than one percent of Hanford Site's workers knew they were working on a nuclear weapons project.

In 1976, a Hanford Site technician named Harold McCluskey received the largest recorded dose of americium following a laboratory accident.

Since then, most of the Hanford Site reactors have been entombed to allow the radioactive materials to decay, and the surrounding structures have been removed and buried.

Concentrations of radionuclides including tritium, technetium-99, and iodine-129 in riverbank springs near the Hanford Townsite have generally been increasing since 1994.

Hanford Site said that though the leak posed no immediate health risk to the public, it should not be an excuse for not doing anything.

Some radioactive waste at Hanford Site was supposed to be stored in the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, but after that project was suspended, Washington State sued, joined by South Carolina.

Since 1977, Hanford operations are directed by the U S Department of Energy.