Plutonium Blues in HanfordBlues in Hanford

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While officials were trying to organize remedies for these safety lapses, they were bedeviled by rumors that workmen at Hanford sometimes indulged in cocaine and marijuana. Local investigators discovered, among other things, that a number of employees had had their security clearance revoked for drug use during the past two years. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Wilson contends that charges of drug abuse have been grossly overblown.

Apart from questions about Hanford's future production, the authorities still confront the problem of what to do with radioactive nuclear wastes both at Hanford and elsewhere. Across the U.S. some 15,000 tons of the poisonous stuff are stored in aging containers by various utility companies; some 1,400 tons more are added every year. Congress thought it had solved the question, more or less, by deciding in 1982 that the Department of Energy would pick one gigantic burial site in the West (where there is more empty space) and one in the East (where most of the waste is produced). When DOE announced its favorite sites last spring, there was a great uproar from every area chosen for the honor; DOE then placated the East (and enraged the West) by announcing that one Western site holding 70,000 tons would be all it needed for the time being.

But which of DOE's three choices should be selected? Texans didn't want the site in Deaf Smith County, Nevadans didn't want it at Yucca Mountain, and Washingtonians particularly didn't want it at Hanford. In fact 84% of Washington voters took that view in a referendum last November. A key reason: Hanford is only five miles from the Columbia River, so any leakage might find its way downstream to Portland. Opponents of the plan charge that Washington is basing its choice on political grounds. The U.S. already owns the 570-sq.- mi. Hanford site, and most of the local citizens favor the nuclear industry as the basis for their jobs. Even this traditional view is changing, however. It was recently learned that dangerous quantities of iodine gases had leaked from the Hanford reactors during the 1940s and that 500,000 gal. of nuclear toxins have leaked into the ground from storage tanks over the years. Those revelations, coupled with the plant's more recent problems, are giving pause to even the most diehard Hanford supporters.