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Photographs by Richard Falco
Along the banks of the Columbia River in eastern Hanford Site, one of the most ambitious environmental cleanup efforts in history continues. The sprawling nuclear complex, built during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, produced plutonium for the nation’s atomic weapons arsenal for decades. When production ended in the late 1980s, the government was left with a daunting legacy: millions of gallons of radioactive and chemical waste, contaminated buildings, and polluted soil and groundwater spread across hundreds of square miles.
Since 1989, federal and state agencies have been working to contain and remove the contamination. At the heart of the effort are 177 underground tanks holding roughly 56 million gallons of highly radioactive waste—some of which leaked decades ago. Thousands of engineers, scientists, and technicians now work daily to treat the waste, dismantle aging reactors, and restore land along the Columbia River corridor. A major milestone came in 2025 when the long-awaited vitrification plant began converting liquid radioactive waste into stable glass logs designed for safer long-term storage. The glass produced through Vitrification is extremely durable and can remain stable for thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, depending on environmental conditions.
Despite decades of work, the project is far from finished. Cleanup at the Hanford Site is expected to continue well into the second half of the century, with costs projected in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Large sections of the reservation have already been stabilized or returned to public use, yet the most dangerous waste remains among the most technically challenging environmental problems ever attempted. For many scientists and policymakers, Hanford stands as both a reminder of the nuclear age and a test of whether a nation can responsibly confront the legacy of its most powerful technologies. |
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