RICHLAND, Wash. — For five years during the 1960s, researchers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation took spent fuel from the plant's bomb-making reactors and conducted a series of radiochemistry experiments. Once the work was finished, the fuel--so radioactive it couldn't be handled except by remote control--was buried in three underground trenches.
And there it remained, largely forgotten. Until last year, when routine surveys found tritium--known to cause birth defects--at concentrations 90 times the federal drinking water standard in a nearby well. By last month, the level of tritium in the ground water had increased fourfold.
The well lies 3 1/2 miles from the Columbia River, the greatest river of the American West, the waterway that irrigates 1 million acres of prime farmland in two states and nurtures 80% of the fall chinook salmon harvested in Alaska and British Columbia.
Tests of other wells have shown that the potent tritium seep hasn't moved more than a quarter-mile from the burial site. Still, Hanford officials say that the contamination could reach the river in as little as three years.
What's more disturbing is what may follow. Tritium is one of the fastest-moving radionuclides and may merely be the scout. Far more deadly nuclear wastes likely are not far behind.
Nowhere has the Cold War's legacy lingered so poisonously as it has at the 560-square-mile Hanford reservation, operated by the federal government for more than 40 years to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs.
It is the most contaminated place in North America, with 80% of the spent nuclear fuel in the Department of Energy's inventory--2,100 metric tons in all--stored in a pair of aging basins, some of their fuel canisters crumbling and corroded. Deteriorating underground tanks a few miles away hold 54 million gallons of radioactive soup that over the years has made its way into the ground water.
How far has it leaked? There is already some tritium in the Columbia River, measurable in Richland's drinking water supply--although at well below federal safety standards. Mulberry bushes measured along the Hanford shore also have shown substantial amounts of strontium-90 and thorium, in addition to other toxic contaminants such as chromium.
None of it, federal officials believe, is enough to jeopardize public health. The Columbia's vast flows so far have diluted the contamination to well within federal standards. But imagine what it will be like in 10 or 20 years, say Washington state officials, who are pushing for increased cleanup efforts.
