What Can The History Of The Hanford Nuclear Site Teach Us About The Future of Nuclear Security Policy?

Sealed off by barbed wire, lined with signs warning Danger: Contaminated Area, and dotted with decommissioned reactors, the 586-square-mile Hanford site in southeastern Washington state is a long-lasting reminder of the hazards of manufacturing nuclear weapons. 

In an era when the U.S. is spending $1.5 trillion dollars to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, China is ramping up its nuclear program, and Russia is conducting nuclear drills in Ukraine — the atomic age seems not that far away. Nor are its lessons.

Opened secretly in 1943 as a crucial part of the Manhattan Project, this vast plot of federally-owned land housed the biggest plutonium-producing complex for American nuclear warheads, including the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Hanford’s nine plutonium-making reactors are now shut down, seven “cocooned” in concrete and steel. 

Since 1989, the Dept. of Energy has been spending between $2-3 billion annually for Hanford’s cleanup, but it remains “the most contaminated, complex nuclear cleanup in the United States,” according to Washington State’s Department of Ecology. Former Washington Governor Gary Locke called it “an underground Chernobyl waiting to happen.” Current projections show that cleanup will continue into the 2060s, with total costs estimated to be up to $5 trillion.

In his book The Apocalypse Factory (W.W. Norton & Company), science writer Steve Olson explores often-overlooked pivotal elements in the history of the nuclear bomb program, including Hanford and its complicated legacy. Below, Olson talks about the lessons we can learn from atomic history and modern nuclear weapons—and the sites integral in their production.

We have a presidential election coming up. What questions should we be asking the candidates about nuclear policy?

 The candidates should be asked: “Will you give up your sole authority to launch nuclear weapons?” 

It’s absolutely insane that a U.S. president can decide to end human civilization without consulting another human being, but that is how our system works today. We need new laws that require the president to consult with other officials before any use of nuclear weapons can be initiated. Otherwise, we risk destruction because a president has made a mistake or has gone mad.

That the U.S. became the first country to develop nuclear weapons is a source of pride to some, while others lament the decision to build them. But once the Germans figured out how to split an atom in 1938, somebody was going to use that newfound capability for nuclear bombs. What are your thoughts?

 I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure that nuclear weapons would have been developed in the years right after the war. But there would have been differences. Maybe there could have been more cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union if the United States had not used those weapons in the war. 

Stalin was so paranoid that when he heard about Hiroshima, he immediately launched a crash program to build his own bomb because he was convinced the United States was demonstrating it could use nuclear weapons against him. Could the Manhattan Project scientists have had more influence in postwar decisions than they did? We’ll never know.

Given the tremendous obstacles, not the least being how to rapidly make plutonium, it’s surprising that the Manhattan Project actually succeeded in producing atomic weapons.

So many things had to go right for nuclear weapons to be available to use against Japan in World War II. Looking back, it’s almost inconceivable that everything worked — not once but twice. But what if World War II had ended without nuclear weapons? How would the postwar years have been different than they were?

In the same way that everybody in 1914 said, “This great war is going to end all wars,” one gets the feeling from your book and from the movie Oppenheimer that these bombs were built with the belief that nobody would want to use these weapons again.

 That’s certainly what the scientists hoped. You remember in the Oppenheimer movie where Niels Bohr asks Robert Oppenheimer whether it’s large enough — in other words, is the weapon so huge that no one would ever conceive of using it? That turned out not to be the case, although, of course, it is true that these weapons have not been used in war since the end of World War II. But we have come very close to both the accidental and purposeful use of those weapons in the 80 years since then, and national leaders are making new threats today.

You write that Hanford was “the most important site in the nuclear era.” Why was Hanford so pivotal? 

The first large-scale nuclear reactor was built at Hanford. It was the first place where one element [uranium] was converted in quantity into another [plutonium] – so the first place where real-life alchemy [changing one element into another] took place. It produced the plutonium that is at the core of all the nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. And yet, most people knew almost nothing about the place!

When you were growing up nearby, were operations at Hanford very secretive?

Absolutely. In the 1960s and early 1970s, when I lived in nearby Othello, [Washington,] Hanford was cranking out plutonium — it was the height of the Cold War. A gigantic barbed-wire fence surrounded the site. When people worked at Hanford — as my grandfather did, he was a pipefitter there — they signed a contract saying they wouldn’t tell anyone what they did, and that was true for many thousands of people. The secrecy surrounding the site is one reason why it’s still so little known today.

Hanford, with its 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste stored in underground tanks, some of which have leaked, is the most contaminated site in the country, according to Washington State’s Department of Ecology – and it is arguably the most toxic, radioactive site in the entire Western Hemisphere. Do you think Hanford will ever be cleaned up? Has progress been made, and if so, how?

Lots of progress has been made. Most of the reactors have been encased in concrete, except for one open for tours, and many contaminated sites have been cleaned up. However, the wastes stored at Hanford still pose many risks. For instance, a large earthquake could disrupt the tanks containing liquid wastes and release them into the ground, where they would begin making their way toward the Columbia River [along which over 8 million people live]. Or a wildfire could disrupt operations, as recently happened at the Pantex nuclear facility near Amarillo. The challenge is to assess the different risks and allocate cleanup funds accordingly.

That’s really the greatest issue with Hanford: the fantastic cost of cleaning up the site. Far more money will be spent cleaning up Hanford than building and operating the plant over its entire lifetime. But will the United States be willing to pay the amount of money required to clean up Hanford? That remains an open question. And it’s something we should consider when considering nuclear power's future. This is an expensive and potentially dangerous technology, and these costs and risks need to be taken into account.

What about nuclear weapons cleanup?

We have fewer nuclear weapons in the world today than in the 1960s and 1970s when the United States and the Soviet Union had enough nuclear warheads to destroy the planet not just once but many times over. As older weapons have been decommissioned, both the U.S. and Russia have faced the problem of what to do with their excess plutonium. This material needs to be disposed of, maybe deep underground, so that it can’t be accessed to rebuild weapons in the future. But today, it’s just sitting in warehouses.

Many believe that climate change is the most pressing threat to humanity. But you’ve indicated in some of your writings that full-on nuclear war is the worst threat we face.

That’s absolutely true. Climate change is a severe problem that will get much worse over time. But a full-scale nuclear exchange could end human civilization in an afternoon. That’s another connection to climate change. A committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is now studying, based on new research, whether nuclear war could shut down agriculture for a decade or more, essentially starving all the survivors of a nuclear war. No sensible person can risk destroying all of humanity and everything that humanity has ever created.

How difficult would it be to get rid of the world’s nuclear arsenal?

It’s a far less difficult problem than climate change, which involves billions of people making choices every day. Eliminating nuclear weapons boils down to nine men getting rid of 12,000 pieces of metal. Gorbachev and Reagan came close in 1986 to agree to get rid of their nuclear weapons. It can happen!