It’s a historic irony that the most pristine stretch of Columbia River real estate was protected from development by bomb-making at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Military patrols made sure no one got close. These days, anglers can fish freely for salmon on the Hanford Reach, a 51-mile stretch of river that boils past the chalky […]
Karen Dorn Steele
Posted inSeptember 1, 1997: Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia
RICHLAND, Wash. – Casey Ruud and John Brodeur have always stood out in Hanford’s take-no-risks nuclear culture. The safety auditor and the geophysicist made powerful enemies when they uncovered major safety problems a decade ago at the nation’s largest plutonium bomb factory, located deep in rural southeastern Washington. Then in 1994, at the prodding of […]
Posted inAugust 18, 1997: The West that was, and the West that can be
A cover-up over fallout?
A cover-up over fallout? The federally funded National Cancer Institute has been sitting on some disturbing news: 10,000 to 72,000 people may develop thyroid cancer from exposure to clouds of radioactive fallout that traveled across the United States between 1951 and 1958. An institute study shows that children living thousands of miles from nuclear bomb […]
Posted inApril 4, 1994: Who speaks for the Colorado Plateau?
Radiation experiments raise ethical questions
SEATTLE, Wash. – The Clinton administration and major universities are apologizing for Cold War radiation experiments on humans, but the man behind the largest such experiment in Washington state maintains he did nothing wrong. Dr. C. Alvin Paulsen used X-rays on the testicles of 64 prisoners at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla during […]
Posted inMarch 26, 1991: The nuclear wasting of the West
Hanford’s pollution is spreading
In 45 years of bomb production at Hanford, nuclear wastes have escaped into the environment from plant stacks, leaking tanks, ditches and deep injection wells. Contaminated groundwater is now reaching the Columbia River on the reservation’s northern and eastern perimeters. Download entire issue to view this article: http://country-survey-collabs.info/issues/23.5/download-entire-issue%3C/p%3E