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Hanford Reach National Monument

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hanford Reach National Monument
LocationBenton / Grant / Franklin / Adams counties, Washington, USA
Nearest cityRichland, WA
Coordinates46°35′00″N 119°31′00″W / 46.58333°N 119.51667°W / 46.58333; -119.51667
Area194,451 acres (78,692 ha) [1]
CreatedJune 8, 2000
Governing bodyU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service U.S. Department of Energy
WebsiteHanford Reach National Monument
Wildflowers at HRNM

The Hanford Reach National Monument is a national monument in the U.S. state of Washington. It was created in 2000, mostly from the former security buffer surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The area has been untouched by development or agriculture since 1943. For this reason, it is considered an involuntary park.

The monument is named after the Hanford Reach, the last non-tidal, free-flowing section of the Columbia River in the United States, and is one of eight National Monuments administered by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service; part of the monument within the Hanford Site is also managed by the Department of Energy. President Bill Clinton established the monument by presidential decree in 2000. In May 2017, the Interior Department announced that Hanford Reach was one of 27 National Monuments under review for possible rescinding of their designation.[2]

Ancestors of the Wanapum People, Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Colville, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation and the Nez Perce used the land for hunting and resource collecting.[citation needed]

Geographically, the area is part of the Columbia River Plateau, formed by basalt lava flows and water erosion. The shrub-steppe landscape is harsh and dry, receiving between 5 and 10 inches (250 mm) of rain per year. The sagebrush-bitterbrush-bunchgrass lands are home to a wide variety of plants and animals, and the Hanford Reach provides one of the Northwest's best salmon spawning grounds. Forty-eight rare, threatened, or endangered animal species have found refuge on the monument, as well as several insect species found nowhere else in the world.[3]

YouTube Encyclopedic

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  • The Area: A Journey through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation
  • Breaking: Tunnel Collapses At Hanford Nuclear Site – Emergency Declared
  • Introduction
  • Demolishing structures on the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve
  • The Hanford Story: Future

Transcription

My name is Cameron and I am a new employee at the Hanford Site for the Department of Energy. I recently graduated college from Utah State University. I've got a videographer along with me to go through a ride of discovery and understanding what Hanford is through several different perspectives. Do you have any childhood memories about hearing of Hanford or anything? I never heard about Hanford. I actually called it 'Hannover' once I was potentially offered the job or started learning more about it. I was telling all my friends that it was 'Hannover.' No match there, we're sorry to say! Then I had to go back and tell them that it was all actually 'Hanford,' because by that time they were all saying "Oh, when are you going to Hannover?"...my dad and everybody, so, never really heard about it. At Hanford, Washington another impossible project proved possible when a huge plant was built for the mass production of the artificial element plutonium. This process involves what may be called the 'furnace of atomic energy:' the reactor pile. Okay, so where are we going? We're going to B Reactor. They tell me that this is the first full scale nuclear reactor that was made in the world, and something about it being the same designation as the Alamo. It's that important, that historic. So we're going to find out why it's so historic. There are a lot of fences around it. Well, the Department of Energy has recognized that B Reactor is unique: it's the first full-sized reactor in the world; the first one capable of producing anything. There was a test reactor in Chicago and then the one-tenth scale reactor in Oak Ridge. They were too small to produce products. They proved the prinicples of operation but they couldn't produce a product, so this is the first production reactor of any kind. This is the brains of the operation, the action center; the physical muscular center of operation is in the front room, but this is the brains of the operation. This is what's behind the gauge, it's a little dial, and it's set, and if the water pressure varied by more than 10 pounds per square inch that meant there was some kind of a blockage in the tube, that water wasn't getting through, and that was the worst possible scenario. So if this varied by more than 10 pounds it would shut down the reactor. And every single one was capable of shutting down the entire reactor. So what was the water used for, exactly? The water cooled the uranium fuel. B Reactor's fuel is metal uranium. During the nuclear reaction it gets very hot. It gets up to the range of many thousands of degrees. And you have to carry that heat away, and the simplest way is simply to carry it off physically with cold water - just a heat transfer system. And that came from the Columbia River? Yes it did. So this is a safety mechanism? These were raised up, almost to the ceiling, and there were hydraulic cylinders beneath them, and then each one of them contains like 45 tons of river rock. If the power went out, which it did on one occasion, totally interrupted the power, there's an electric clutch that would of course fail with no power, and then they would slam down and the hydrolic energy would drive in the control rods and shut down the reactor. And you said one time it was used? One time a Japanese barrage balloon, which was incendiary, floated over, cut a power line; the power went out for about one second, but these deployed and the reactors were down for about 3 days Wow. That's going to be my word of the day: 'wow.' It seems like a pretty interesting dynamic that what was done here was very historic, very scientific, but there were repercussions with what happened here as well, too. Do the people that come and visit, are they kind of pro- the science that happened here, or do they concentrate on some of the negative aspects, or both? We have every type of visitor. What I tell visitors is "you will form your own opinions, and we want you to do that, but I will convince you that the engineering was miraculous." What was generated; what was the waste-legacy from B Reactor? Well a reactor doesn't generate anything like tank waste, a reactor generates contaminated water. And the water did flow into holding basins and then into the Columbia River; it did create some contamination; it did heat up the river very, very slightly. And the solid waste, mechanical parts that failed, we buried in the soil. They are here. They have to be dug up; they have to be remediated. And so we are paying, still paying, for the cost of operation, today. Now the river has cleansed itself, but we still have to deal with contaminated soil and groundwater. We're about to see Paul Vinther, Paul was actually a worker who worked at Hanford during the 50s and up through the 80s and he's got a lot of stories he wants to share with us. Come along. So if someone comes to you, maybe on the street or somewhere else and they say, "Hey, I don't know a lot about Hanford, I've lived here my whole life but I don't know a lot." What do they need to know about Hanford? Well, it was developed at a time when the nation needed it. We had Hitler in Europe, threatening to dominate the world; Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and it was threatening also. I know a lot of people... I have been asked, "How could you work with plutonium that could kill so many people and this sort of thing?" Well, it was a different time. You were fighting for your life also here. So, what, going there, and being around these people, and knowing what you're working on, what was the atmosphere like, what was the feeling like? There was very strong loyalty to both what we were doing and to the agency at the time, who was operating the Site. Very strong, loyal employees who felt they were doing an important job. Was there still a lot of secrecy, or "you can't tell anyone...?" There was secrecy, that was part of the problem. Of course, when I came here we knew what we were making. We weren't making bombs, we were just making plutonium. We sent that plutonium off to somebody else and they would make the bombs. That sort of thing. So, I'm curious, you were there for 38 years, you kind of saw the end of the Cold War, and now Hanford's in more of a cleanup mode, cleaning up what's left over: What are your feelings of seeing that all as a worker there, and now as it transitions to cleanup? Well, I think it's important to clean up. I worked at N Reactor for about 4 years, operations manager there; it was a fantastic plant, a wonderful plant. To see them now blowing it up and taking it down; it kind of hits you. Yeah. But you understand it; you understand what's happening. So where are we going exactly? We're headed to talk with the Nez Perce tribe, we're going to talk with Horace Axtell, who is a tribal elder for the Nez Perce, and also Gabe Bonhee, who is one of the directors of one of the programs the tribes have where they work with the Department of Energy. [Native language] [Native language] [Native language] [Native language] [Native language] [Native language] So, I said: "In this big river all the different kinds of fish come this way and they go up the small rivers and small creeks to generate or raise more fish, and that's what is important to us. Because it kept our people alive in the past." Can you tell me the importance of the Columbia River to the Nez Perce? The Columbia is the life-blood; it's the waterway that all the other waterways and tributaries in the Northwest run into; they flow out to the Pacific, which then, you know, the Pacific offers the salmon that come up the river and is our main issue with water that we take into our bodies in the traditional sense. So here at Hanford the local tribes' mission is to protect those resources as we near cleanup and look at the future of the Hanford Site, and the long term stewardship issues in making sure that we plan effectively to cohabitate the areas and co-utilize the resources out there; that we protect them for everyone, and that we are respectful of our past as well as our future. And so with looking ahead to the future what's the hope that the Nez Perce tribe has for the Hanford Site? Our hope is to be able to come back to the Site, and practice our traditional ways out on the Site, and rekindle those ties and trade routes that did occur, and maybe hopefully have a gathering that can occur with all the tribes on site. You know the challenges at Hanford are very complex and are going to take some time to fully understand what the effects of contamination are, and it'll always be a challenge; there will always be barriers as to how effective the cleanup can occur, so our challenges as a tribe is to educate our youth and to get involved in this very tough arena that is not very highlighted in the public eye. First of all, Dave, what is Hanford? It's a lot of different things to different people; what is Hanford to you and what is Hanford in general? Well Hanford's history, it's a lot of history, goes back to a townsite that I think was founded sometime in the mid- to late- 1800s. It then was the name that was used to describe a large area of over 600 and some square miles that was set aside to produce plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project. So it really just describes an area here in Central Washington that has been used for many things, most recently it was a site of plutonium production. You know, it was a large, very complex nuclear industrial facility with fifty miles of the Columbia River running through it. So what are the challenges associated with your job? Well, first, it's an extremely large site; it's spread out, the hydrodynamics of the site dealing with the groundwater are very complex and understanding those, along with we don't know where all of the waste sites are, we think we have a pretty good handle on it to decontaminate the groundwater. The waste sites were characterized, but not 100 percent and we find surprises every day. And we're dealing with a very hazardous environment: not only from chemicals and the nuclear part, the radiological part, but it is in the middle of a desert and there are extreme temperatures both cold and hot, and we have the wind, and a lot of the work is outdoors, so there's a lot of different elements that factor in and the one thing we're committed to is to keep our people safe. Why is there so much tank waste on site? Well, plutonium production operations went on for a good number of years and as part of the process of separating the plutonium out there was the waste that was generated, and the decision was made to store that in underground tanks. There was a lot of waste generated and that is where it was stored. From the time of that first explosion until Hiroshima shuttered beneath the release of atomic energy, work on the bomb went steadily forward in closely guarded plants in New Mexico, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. So my understaning is that your connection to Hanford is both professional and personal, can you explain about that? Yeah it's fortuitous, my mother is from Nagasaki, Japan, and the material that was made for the plutonium that went into the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was produced here at Hanford back in the 1940s. I am in charge of the 53 million gallons of tank waste that's the legacy from the Cold War. And we are in charge of retrieving, treating, and then immobilizing that tank waste eventually into glass for long-term storage. The Waste Treatment Plant is kind of the cornerstone of the treatment of the tank waste here at Hanford, and Bechtel National is building that Waste Treatment Plant project. Our River Protection project is about a 62 billion dollar project, just to do the tank waste and it goes out to 2047, and then building the Waste Treatment Plant is about 12.3 billion, and that will go operational in the 2019 time period. So it is a huge project overall; it's the critical path for Hanford's cleanup. So what is the Tri-Party Agreement, who does it involve, and how does it govern cleanup? That's a good question: the Tri-Party Agreement is between 3 parties: The Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the State Department of Ecology. And it was established in 1989, so for the past 20 years the Tri-Party agreement, or we call it the TPA, is really the committments that the government has made to the other agencies and the public. Now, Todd, can you talk to us a little bit about what Washington Closure Hanford does? Washington Closure Hanford manages the River Corridor closure project, it's a 2 billion dollar project that runs through 2015, September 2015. Our job is to tear down contaminated buildings and to clean up contaminated waste sites that are located along the Columbia River. We have about 1,100 employees and subcontract employees And their jobs are to clean up waste sites, tear down contaminated buildings, and to operate the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. Most of our work is done along the river where the reactors were located and where the fuel was manufactured through those reactors. There are waste sites located there; there are buildings there, and those are the things that we're tearing down and cleaning up, and moving that stuff, contaminated material, into the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility in the central part of the site, which is where all that material goes. We've done well over a hundred building demolitions to date, and hundreds of thousands millions of tons of material removed from waste sites. Our drivers, for example, that haul the waste around, just did their one millionth mile without an accident, and in fact they've driven probably at this point over 13 million miles with only one accident, which is an outstanding record. Those are the kinds of accomplishments that we look at and hope to continue obviously, and to do them safely. What have you learned from this experience? I learned that things don't always go as planned and that happens everywhere in the world, I'm assuming, but it's been good to just roll with it, and understand that you have a certain canvas to work and certain messages that people give you. And it's been fun; it's been a little bit of stress and anxiety, but I think it's a postive anxiety. What are some of the challenges we're seeing at Hanford right now? I think the biggest cleanup challenges at Hanford are the 50 million gallons of highly radioactive waste in the 177 tanks at Hanford, and about a third of the single shell tanks at Hanford (70 or so) have leaked in the past, and so getting that waste out of the tanks and treated is the biggest goal. With that, there are a lot of challenges but I've also heard some good things with regard to cleanup, so what are those good things we're hearing? Well I think we'd all say the River Corridor cleanup is a big success. To date we've overseen the movement of over 60 percent of the contaminated soil and debris from the River Corridor up to the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. So you can say we're more than halfway done, and that 's really encouraging. Well Hanford's divided into 3 main areas, they're called by numbers: the 100, 200, and 300 Area, and within the 586 square mile Hanford Site those are actually fairly small areas. The 100 Area includes nuclear production reactors; they're all on the order of a square mile or one and a half miles square. They don't take up a whole lot of real estate. The 300 Area is just a few hundred acres, and the core of the 200 Area is about 10 square miles. So when you add that up, the most intensively used, most contaminated areas of Hanford are just perhaps 10 or 20 square miles. And there's a lot of open space where there is some contamination, as you would expect at any large industrial site, but a lot of the areas are fairly pristine. I recently moved here and I know some of the people might hear about Hanford and say, "Well, is it safe to live there?" What's your response to those types of questions? I think we all think the Tri-Cities is a great place to live; we live here obviously, you know that Columbia River is really a national resource. It's recognized as such because it's part of the Hanford Reach National Monument. You know, I think people hear about Hanford and they're concerned about what's called 'the most contaminated site in North America' but the river's a great resource, you know we sample the environment all the time, the river and a lot of resources around here are absolutely safe and available for the public to use. And we just want to make sure that all of the Hanford Site gets back to that same status. I'm here with Dennis Faulk, the Hanford Program Manager for the EPA, and, Dennis, what is the Environmental Protection Agency's mission? Well, overall our mission is of course to protect the environment. And what's the mission with respect to Hanford? At Hanford we're here as part of the Tri-Party Agreement. Our role is regulatory oversight: in essence the Department of Energy here is responsible for the cleannup, and we oversee it to make sure it's done in order to protect human health and the environment. The cleanup has actually been ongoing for 20 years now; we actually just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Tri-Party Agreement. And we've made tremendous progress along the river, getting waste off the river and in a stable configuration up on the Central Plateau. So, you being one of the regulators of Hanford, what are some of the challenges that you see on a day-to-day basis, and even years down the road? One of the things that is very difficult about Hanford is just it's size; it's enormous, we have over 1,800 waste sites that need to be cleaned up; we have over 80 square miles of contaminated groundwater that's above drinking water standards. So one of the big issues when you have a cleanup that spans many decades is just keeping focus, because again it's with focus that we actually get projects completed. I'm here with Susan Leckband, chair of the Hanford Advisory Board. And, Susan, can you tell us a little bit about what the Hanford Advisory Board is? The Hanford Advisory Board consists of a group of varying interests who follow Hanford cleanup. It is a board of interests, and I'm saying that specifically because most of the other advisory boards are boards of individuals. This particular board was established to represent the interests involved - as an example, Physicians for Social Responsbility have a seat on the board. There are many local government seats and those entities choose their member to be on the Board. Okay. And why is it important to have the Hanford Advisory Board? The Hanford Advisory Board provides the Tri-Party agencies with values from the interest groups and from citizens at large on Hanford decisions. There are huge amounts of money being spent here and huge environmental concerns, and these agencies listen to our Board and really kind of consider us a sounding board. What's the 'take away' message for Hanford cleanup? Well, what I want people to understand is that we're getting a lot of work done, a lot of work done every day out there. Both from what we get with our normal budget and the Recovery Act money. The money is being put to good use. We are gaining on the groundwater and contaminated waste sites; we will stop the contaminated water from entering the Columbia River. Within the next 4-5 years it will be stopped. I just think good progress is being made. There's an awful lot to do yet; there's years left, but you've got to understand that a lot of our hightest risks have been eliminated out there. The message that I take home is that there's a a lot of different people coming together and working on a huge project - the largest environmental cleanup in the world. And so just understanding that there has to be a science perspective; there has to be someone who comes in and says, "Well this has tribal significance," or, "This technology is feasible," and the people that live here too, that this is in their backyard and they have an input and a say too. So it's a difficult task; it's a necessary task, and it's one that a lot of intelligent and helpful people are working and collaborating together on to get accomplished. That's kind of the 'take-home.' It's bigger than I ever would have thought.

Fish and wildlife

There are two main habitats in the Hanford Reach National Monument: desert and river.

Islands, riffles, gravel bars, oxbow ponds and backwater sloughs provide support to forty-three species of fish. Large numbers of fall Chinook salmon spawn in the Hanford reach. Federally threatened species such as the Upper Columbia River Spring Chinook, the Middle Columbia River Steelhead and the Upper Columbia River Steelhead use the reach for migration purposes.[4]

The refuge is famous for the elk located on the Arid Lands Ecology Area. Herd numbers vary by time of year with 150 seen during the spring/summer and 350 to 375 during the fall. The elk population reaches its peak in the winter with an average of 670. Archaeologists believed the elk had been in the region for the last 10,000 years. During the mid-19th century, first hand accounts mentioned the disappearance of the species. Rocky Mountain elk were reintroduced into the region during the 1930s,[5] as well as a natural recolonization event from the nearby cascade mountains during the difficult 1978 winter.

The dry, desert region is home to forty-two mammal species. Mice are the most abundant and include the deer mouse, western harvest mouse, northern grasshopper mouse. Mammals that inhabit this refuge include coyotes, skunks, beavers, mule deer, bobcats, river otters, minks, cougars and badgers.

Hanford Nuclear Reservation

Hanford Reach is home to nine nuclear reactors of which B Reactor is the most famous; constructed in 13 months during World War II, it was the world's first full scale reactor. Plutonium from the reactor was used in the first nuclear explosion at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico (July 16, 1945) and in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan (August 9, 1945).

The reactor's significance has led to many distinctions including a place on the National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, National Register of Historic Places, Nuclear Historic Landmark, National Civil Engineering Landmark and National Historic Landmark.

Access

Map of Hanford Reach National Monument

The monument is open from two hours before sunrise to two hours after sunset; some areas are open to the public and others are not:

Several sites in the adjacent Hanford Site including the B Reactor are part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park and are accessible on public tours.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Annual Report of Lands as of September 30, 2009" (PDF). United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
  2. ^ Dept. of Interior press release, doi.gov. Accessed February 7, 2024.
  3. ^ "US Fish and Wildlife Hanford Reach National Monument". August 18, 2009. Retrieved August 18, 2009.
  4. ^ "U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: Hanford Reach Wildlife & Habitat". fws.gov. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Retrieved 2016-07-23.
  5. ^ "US Fish and Wildlife Hanford Reach National Monument Elk". August 18, 2009. Retrieved August 18, 2009.

External links

This page was last edited on 8 February 2024, at 05:44
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