On the desert plateau above the Columbia River, a sprawling nuclear complex the size of a midsize county still holds the most dangerous leftovers of the Cold War. At Washington’s Hanford Site, 177 underground tanks have stored 56 million gallons of radioactive waste for nearly 80 years, and 67 of those tanks are already known to have leaked into the soil. That toxic inheritance now collides with a national push for new reactors, exposing a basic contradiction: America is racing to revive nuclear power while its most contaminated landscape remains only partially contained.
The stakes are not abstract. Washington is responsible for cleaning up nearly two-thirds of the nation’s defense-related high-level waste, and the death toll tied to this work is already measured in the thousands. As the federal government debates changing course on cleanup and Congress advances pro-nuclear legislation that barely mentions waste, the country is running out of time to treat Hanford as a remote problem that can be managed quietly in the desert.
Hanford’s buried catastrophe is bigger than most Americans realize
Hanford was carved out of southeastern Washington as a 580 square mile factory for plutonium, a secret city that helped build the bomb and then kept churning out material for decades. In the rush to win the arms race, the U.S. government discharged liquid waste into unlined trenches and crammed the rest into those 177 tanks, which together hold 56 m gallons of highly radioactive sludge that will remain dangerous for longer than human institutions have ever survived. We already know that 67 of those tanks have leaked, meaning some of the most toxic material on Earth has migrated into the ground and toward the aquifer that feeds the Columbia River, a reality documented in detail by There.
State and federal scientists have spent years mapping contaminated plumes and installing pump-and-treat systems, yet Washington officials still describe Hanford as one of the most polluted places in the country. The state’s own materials note that, in their hurry, the U.S. government created what many consider the most polluted spot in the nation at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State, a judgment backed by groundwater research summarized in a However brochure. When I look at those numbers, I see not just a local hazard but a national failure of stewardship, the nuclear equivalent of leaving barrels of gasoline in a school basement and hoping the building never catches fire.
Washington is carrying a national burden while policy drifts
Hanford is not just another Superfund site, it is the center of gravity for America’s military nuclear waste. Washington hosts and oversees the cleanup of nearly two-thirds of the nation’s defense-related high-level radioactive waste at Hanford, a role the state’s attorney general has underscored in official descriptions of the stalled Yucca Mountain repository and the broader federal impasse on permanent disposal, as laid out by Washington. That means decisions made in distant Washington, D.C., about where to send commercial spent fuel or whether to revive Yucca Mountain directly affect how much risk remains parked along the Columbia and for how long.
Yet national policy is drifting in the opposite direction of accountability. Nearly 80 years of nuclear waste in the United States is now stranded in what were supposed to be temporary storage sites, with no permanent repository in operation, a reality highlighted in a federal overview and echoed in coverage that notes Nearly 80 years of nuclear waste is stuck in limbo at dozens of locations nationwide, as described by Nearly. When I compare that paralysis to the urgency with which new nuclear projects are being promoted, it is hard not to conclude that the country is treating waste as an afterthought, even as Washington shoulders the consequences.
A milestone in vitrification, shadowed by federal mixed signals
Against that bleak backdrop, the long-delayed effort to turn Hanford’s liquid waste into glass has finally begun to show tangible progress. Governor Ferguson and the state Department of Ecology recently celebrated a historic achievement at Hanford, marking nuclear waste officially being turned into glass, with Governor Ferguson saying it is difficult to overstate how important this milestone is and emphasizing that the glassified waste can be stored for Thousands of years, as described in a Hanford release. The U.S. Department of Energy has also said it will meet an October deadline to start up a $9 billion facility that will process waste at the site, a commitment that, if kept, would finally move the Waste Treatment Plant from a construction saga into an operating shield between the tanks and the river, as confirmed by the Department of Energy.
Yet even as vitrification inches forward, federal messaging has been anything but steady. According to a representative from Senator Murray’s office, Secretary Wright indicated the DOE’s intention to stop the Waste Treatment Pla from operating certain facilities, raising alarms in Washington that the department might walk back binding cleanup commitments, a concern captured in a According briefing. State officials have publicly demanded evidence that this administration is moving forward on the decades-long effort to turn nuclear waste into glass and meeting its legal obligations, a pointed message reported in Sep coverage. When I put those statements side by side, I see a pattern that has dogged Hanford for decades: technical milestones celebrated in one breath, strategic ambiguity about long term funding and scope in the next.
Human costs, Indigenous resistance, and the myth of “out of sight” waste
For people who live near Hanford, the disaster is not theoretical, it is measured in illnesses, disrupted traditions, and funerals. The plants with the highest number of deaths in the nuclear weapons complex include the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, with 3,741, and the Hanford Site in Washington state, with 3,461, a grim tally documented in an investigation of the National Security Complex. Characters like Tom Carpenter, senior advisor at the nonprofit watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, and Russell Jim, an Indigenous leader who fought for tribal rights and environmental justice, have spent years arguing that cleanup decisions must be more equitable and transparent, a demand detailed in a profile of Characters. Their work underscores a basic truth: the people who have borne the brunt of contamination are often the least empowered to shape the cleanup.
That imbalance is especially stark for tribal nations whose homelands include the Columbia. The Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have criticized recent negotiations over a major cleanup agreement, arguing that the process has not adequately reflected their concerns and that they do not consent to some of the disposal pathways suggested by this agreement, as reported in a The Yakama Nation account. When I hear those objections, I am reminded of how, after September 11, Thousands of people were tragically killed and Thousands of others were still affected by toxic exposures at or around Ground Zero, a parallel drawn in a reflection on Thousands of. In both cases, workers and nearby communities were told the risks were manageable, only to discover years later that the invisible contaminants were rewriting their health and their futures.
Nuclear revival without waste answers is a dangerous illusion
Nationally, the conversation about nuclear power has pivoted toward climate urgency and new reactor designs, but the waste problem has not kept pace. From 1950 to 1990, the Energy Department produced an average of four nuclear warheads a day, leaving behind a Poisonous Cold War Legacy That Defies any easy Solution, as chronicled in a sweeping examination of the Poisonous Cold War. Recent legislation, the ADVANCE Act, was written to accelerate approval of new nuclear technologies, yet it does not mention nuclear waste at all, a glaring omission highlighted in an analysis of the ADVANCE Act. When policymakers celebrate a “nuclear renaissance” while leaving Hanford’s tanks and the nation’s stranded spent fuel in limbo, they are effectively building a second story on a house whose foundation is already cracked.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
