As it turns out

There was the time when Hanford was a significant source of pride to America. In 1943, the first plutonium production site in the world began to be erected right here in our corner of the country.

Hanford produced the plutonium core for “Fat Man” (not Fat Boy, thanks Matt), the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. This indescribably cruel weapon of mass destruction killed 115,000 men, women and children. World War II was ended.

Hanford produced plutonium at top speed throughout the Cold War. When the dust cleared, Hanford had produced two-thirds of the plutonium for America’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

National pride in Hanford has long since departed, replaced with an instinctive mourning for the death of once pristine land, magnificent wildlife and human innocence.

For all its nuclear heroism of the past, Hanford now has the hair-raising distinction of being the largest and most toxic nuclear waste dump in America. Thousands of years are needed to see radioactive waste past the toxic stage. (Perhaps it’s time for us to examine Stephen Hawking’s theory on the importance of colonizing Mars. No laughing matter.)

Scientists of the world have been hoping beyond hope that someone smarter than themselves will come along with the solution for successful nuclear waste cleanup.

The Hanford waste cleanup project began in 1989 when the Tri-Party Agreement was signed, legally enforcing cleanup schedules and standards.

The Department of Energy (DOE) signed on in charge, with the Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Ecology as co-signers. But DOE has used courtrooms to skirt both these legalities and those of Washington’s 2004 Initiative 297.

The plan was to build the world’s largest running vitrification plant at Hanford to “glassify” the toxic waste into nice neat logs for storage deep in the earth.

Construction halted last summer at about 30 percent completion because of earthquake design flaws. Worse, no one knows if the vit plant will work or not when it’s finished.

Congressional committees and DOE both show exasperated reluctance on continuing to fund Hanford, meaning the vitrification project could be abandoned. Washington politicians have declared war for that funding.

DOE is not interested in cleaning up Hanford. They have proven this since 1989 by missing important deadlines and allowing substandard design and construction. DOE wants to build new nuclear plants.It’s no fun to be on cleanup, ask any kid. Unless told to stop everything and do the cleanup before they start a new project creating even more mess, why would they do it?

Should we allow them to build new nuclear energy plants? Should we allow them to then pile radioactive garbage from those new plants on existing heaps of leaking waste before the site can first be cleaned up to a reasonably agreed upon standard (per the Tri-Party Agreement)?

Is it time we use our voting rights to say, “Stop”? Many Americans have forgotten that we have that power, others have yet to learn the possibilities. We can’t go into this situation looking the other way. There’s a very real chance that Hanford could become the permanent national radioactive waste dump for America as Yucca Mountain (Nevada) looks less likely.

It’s unfortunate that no one knows how to dissuade nuclear waste from continuing to torment the earth once it’s no longer needed or wanted. he world only has so long for that smarter scientist to materialize with the answer.

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