Don’t Let Hanford Become a National Nuclear Waste Dump

Jeanie Sedgely is the Hanford issues coordinator for Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The Bush administration is planning to ship 70,000 truckloads of radioactive waste from around the country to the Hanford site in southeastern Washington. This defense waste will travel through more than 40 states on its way to the Northwest. Spokane is one of the alternate routes for these shipments. Initiative 297 will stop the import of new radioactive defense waste to Hanford until existing waste at the site is in compliance with state and federal environmental laws. Allowing new waste to be added to the Hanford site will delay cleanup, increase health and safety risks to workers, further threaten the Columbia River and create public health threats by unnecessarily transporting the waste around the country.

“Protect Washington,” a broad coalition of peace, health and environmental organizations is spearheading the campaign and must collect 240,000 signatures by the end of this year to put Initiative 297 before the state legislature. If the legislature takes no action, the initiative will be on the November 2004 ballot. In addition to preventing Hanford from becoming the next national radioactive waste dump, Initiative 297 will prohibit the use of unlined trenches for toxic waste—a cleanup strategy still practiced by the U.S. Dept. of Energy (USDOE).

Hanford, the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere, is not a scientifically sound location for more nuclear waste. The overburdened site already has:

•60 percent of the nation’s high-level radioactive defense waste,

•enormous underground storage tanks (each holds one million gallons) that are leaking radioactive and poisonous chemicals into the soil, and

•200 square miles of contaminated groundwater migrating to the Columbia River.

The staggering amount of waste currently at Hanford was decades in the making. In the early 1940s, the federal government selected southeast Washington as an ideal location to pursue the Manhattan Project, the nation’s race to develop the first atomic bomb. It was a remote area with a tremendous abundance of water and power—the Columbia River. In 1943 under a veil of secrecy, the government brought 50,000 workers to this isolated area to begin construction on plutonium production facilities. Plutonium, which remains radioactive for thousands of years, is named after Pluto, the mythical God of Death. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

The urgency and secrecy surrounding the production of this plutonium was paramount. The health and safety of workers was a lower priority. Little thought was given to the consequences of dumping radioactive waste into the ground and the Columbia River. They decided these concerns could be dealt with later. Later is now.

Decisions about cleanup at Hanford will affect generations to come. The organizations that support Initiative 297 want cleanup to be the top priority at Hanford. Bringing in new waste to a grossly contaminated site simply does not make sense. The radioactive and chemical waste currently at Hanford must be dealt with first, before any thought of adding more is seriously considered.

The number of organizations that endorse Initiative 297 is growing rapidly. Organizations such as Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR), the Government Accountability Project, Heart of America Northwest, Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War (SNOW), the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Whatcom County Democratic Party, the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters are just some of the organizations saying, “Enough is enough!”

Your help is urgently needed in getting this statewide initiative on the 2004 ballot. To learn more about how you can make a difference, please contact Jeanie Sedgely, WPSR Hanford issues coordinator, at (206) 547-2630 or jeanied@wpsr.org. You can also find out more about Hanford by visiting http://www.wpsr.org. §