Fire Came Close To Toxic Dumps Hanford’S Most Lethal Wastes Stored At 200 East, 200 West
The sprawling 200 West and 200 East areas at Hanford are two nuclear waste dumping grounds used for decades during the Cold War arms race.
The radioactive and chemical wastes dumped there polluted the desert soil, clogged the pipes and crannies of now-abandoned buildings and contaminated tumbleweeds rolling across the desert.
Dangerous liquid wastes were poured into the soil for more than 40 years - a crude disposal method that’s outlawed today. In all, about 440 billion gallons of liquids soaked into the ground.
The Plutonium Finishing Plant, used to refine plutonium from 1949 until the late 1980s, is located in the 200 West area. The plant was deactivated in 1996 and contains about 12 tons of plutonium, a radioactive element that poses a major cancer risk if inhaled.
The plant made headlines in 1997 and 1998 when an old chemical tank exploded and an unmonitored underground storage tank was found to contain dangerous plutonium sludge.
Hanford’s most lethal liquid wastes are stored in these two areas in 177 underground tanks, some of which have leaked deep into the desert soil. The oldest - fragile single-shell tanks - periodically belch and rumble with unstable gases.
The tanks contain about 54 million gallons of high-level waste.
From 1944 to 1966, more than 120 million gallons of highly radioactive tank wastes were poured into cribs - covered trenches - in the 200 East area because Hanford was running out of tank space.
The cribs acted like a septic tank drain field. They received low- and medium-level uranium-bearing waste from 1952 to 1958, which then leached into the ground. The soil was expected to filter out radioactive particles before the waste hit ground water.
The area also contained radioactive waste disposal ponds. The ponds received low-level waste. It primarily came from ventilation cooling water and floor drains from the 1950s through the 1970s.
No tank wastes have been dumped intentionally to the ground since 1966.
The PUREX plant, a massive concrete bunker the length of three football fields that chemically extracted plutonium from nuclear fuel rods, is in the 200 East area. It was built in 1955 and closed in 1990.
Hanford officials have acknowledged the risks of a tank explosion but say it’s unlikely. When a similar tank blew up in the Soviet Union in 1957, it spewed radiation for 180 miles, creating a toxic no-man’s land.
The Hanford numbering system was developed by Hanford’s wartime contractor, E.E. duPont deNemours, Inc. The lowest numbers along the river (100 areas) were assigned when the first production reactors were erected; the numbers increased toward the town of Richland - the 700 area.