Workers cleaning up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site discovered an area of soil so radioactive it exceeds lethal limits says the U.S. Department of Energy.































(Outside a laboratory, a toy wagon is used to carry radioactive material at the Hanford Atomic Energy plant in 1955. Photo by Nat Farbman, from the amazing LIFE/Google archive.)

From the Spokesman: “This is extremely high radiation. Nothing else compares in the river corridor,” said Mark French, Department of Energy project director for environmental cleanup in the river corridor, the 75 square miles of Hanford along the Columbia River.

Radioactivity has been measured at 8,900 rad per hour, which would be about 10 times the lethal dose on contact, according to Hanford officials. The building where the leak was found is about 1,000 feet from the Columbia River.

However, there is no evidence that the contamination has reached the ground water, which could carry the contamination to the river, Hanford officials said. Wells are used to monitor ground water for contamination in the 300 Area, and more monitoring is planned.

Full story HERE.

The building, in Hanford's 300 Area where research was conducted, is considered one of the area's most difficult to decontaminate and demolish. Under a cleanup contract between the state and federal governments, the building is to be demolished by the end of 2012.

Hanford was created by the federal government in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The site produced plutonium for nuclear weapons through the Cold War but the work left hundreds of radioactive buildings, including nuclear reactors, debris and waste.

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