A River Reborn in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Cleanup

 

For centuries, the mighty Columbia River—the largest waterway by volume in the Pacific Northwest—served as a major thoroughfare and a prime fishing spot. But the river's waters were put to another use in the 1940s: cooling nuclear reactors. In a remote part of Washington, USA, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation quietly set up shop on a 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch of the Columbia's majestic banks.

The vast site would be ground zero for nuclear weapons development, producing plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project. The scientists behind the top-secret research initiative built the first atomic bomb that ultimately helped to end World War II. But in their quest to win a nuclear arms race, the scientists paid little attention to the environmental consequences of their work. By the time the U.S. Department of Energy closed Hanford in 1987, it had the dubious distinction of being the country's most contaminated nuclear site.

With widespread groundwater contamination threatening drinking water and wildlife, the U.S. Department of Energy in 2005 hired Washington Closure Hanford (WCH)—a joint venture of AECOM, Bechtel and CH2M—to clean up 220 square miles (570 square kilometers) of the site.

The nine-year, US$2 billion River Corridor Base Scope contract involved removing more than 140,000 tons of chrome-contaminated soil from the ground, …

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