Politicians, community members and environmental advocates were among a group of more than 50 attendees who discussed the Hanford nuclear site at a lecture panel at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Eugene on Monday night. It was the first Hanford hearing to take place in Eugene.
The Hanford Site, located along the Columbia River in southern Washington, is a center of controversy in the Pacific Northwest.
The water and soil surrounding Hanford is contaminated by chemicals and radioactive materials as a result of the dumping of nuclear waste. The site was created during the Manhattan Project and was active from 1943-88 to produce plutonium. A Hanford cleanup project began in 1988 when the plant closed and is an ongoing endeavor.
There are 53 million gallons of nuclear waste in Hanford’s 177 nuclear waste tanks, while 80 square miles of groundwater are contaminated, said Ken Niles from the Oregon Department of Energy. It is the most contaminated area in the Western Hemisphere, according to DOE.
The DOE and State of Washington are working on a Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement. The statement outlines a cleanup project and estimates the environmental effects of the site’s operation.
Mary Beth Burandt of the federal Office of River Protection is managing the impact statement, which is currently in a draft stage and Burandt’s office is gathering public comment. She said there is no deadline for completion of the site cleanup.
To rid the Hanford site of waste, the DOE is building treatment facilities. The building complex is estimated to cost $12 billion and the cleanup is estimated to cost $2 billion, Niles said.
These billions of dollars will come from taxpayers’ money.
Shirley Olinger, manager of the Office of River Protection, said the facility and its objective is a complex one.
“The treatment facility is one-of-a-kind,” Olinger said. “People from all over the world are looking to us.”
Plant and animal species that could be affected by the nuclear waste, including salmon and sturgeon, will be considered in the cleanup plans, Burandt said.
There are long-term impacts of chemical waste from Hanford, Niles said. Chemicals like Iodine 29 could seep into the groundwater and linger in the environment for up to 5,000 years.
“This is not the future we want to have,” he said.
Community members had a chance during the hearing to ask questions and make comments. Several people expressed concerns about the Obama Administration’s plans to build more nuclear plants and use nuclear energy as an alternative resource.
Gerald Pollet, co-founder and executive director of the Heart of America Northwest, the self-proclaimed “public’s voice for Hanford clean up,” expressed his concerns about DOE’s plans to use Hanford as a waste-dumping ground.
“There are 40 miles of unlined ditches at Hanford that the energy department dumped radioactive waste into, up until 2004,” Pollet said.
Pollet called the impact statement treatment plan a cover-up, not a cleanup project.
Other audience members expressed concern about the amount of tax dollars being spent on the project.
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