You should cover the Soviet industrial evacuation to the Ural mountains during the early stages of Barbarossa in WWII, probably one of the biggest mega projects in history!
Do an episode about the Santa Susana Field laboratory , they did research for rocket engines for the Apollo program and they had 10 nuclear reactors over it's decades of operation.
In 1972 the tv show 60 Minutes had a segment about Hanford. They had gotten waterfowl (ducks) that had come through the area on their southern migration from Canada. These ducks ate corn from fields that had been harvested in the area, then they flew back to the Columbia river to rest or whatever. They found that these ducks had a high-concentration of radioactivity probably from sitting on the river. My family used to hunt ducks both on the river and in the corn fields. We ate 100s of ducks and geese from 1965 to 1971 from that area. It was legal to hunt on the Hanford side of the river until about 71 then Hanford guards would make you leave. In 70 guards landed a helicopter by our hunting site, decoys and all that, they thought we had come in from the Hanford side of the river which would have entailed about 25 miles of carrying our boat across the desert, haha, they weren't the brightest bunch, we put our boat in at Ringold Springs area. We quit hunting their in 71, my mother and father lived to be in their late 90s so I guess the waterfowl meat didnt effect us. Have a nice day.
My mother worked at Hanford beginning around 1975. She started off doing non-destructive testing of welds for the pipes in one of the reactors which was being built at the time. She said nothing would piss a man off more than having a woman tell them their weld was bad. Sometime in the '80s she was passing through one of the radiation detectors while leaving work and set it off. The people on site who dealt with such matters wanted her to completely strip so she could be scrubbed down, just like in the movie Silkwood. My mother very firmly told them no, she would take her overalls off first then go through the detector again. That is what she did, and it turned out the contamination was limited to some alpha particles on the outside of those overalls. My mother worked for a variety of contractors through the years doing a variety of jobs. She was a project planner, assisting with one of the many ongoing clean-up projects, when she retired in 2015. As a kid growing up in the area surrounding Hanford, my friends and I all know the importance and history of the Hanford site. We are also very much aware of the legacy of contamination which has been left behind.
My mom grew up near Hanford and she is the only one in the family that never worked there. My great-grandfather was an electrician that worked on the initial construction, my grandfather was a heavy equipment operator, my aunt was an administrative assistant, and my grandmother was a secretary. My grandmother had top-secret security clearance, so my mom has told me about how when she was younger she thought it was normal for the FBI to come visit your house to interview everyone.
I am surprised that so many people from around the tri-cities areas are actually all watching the same video, I always thought that our little east side of Washington is always forgotten about and the west side is the only acknowledged part of our state.
I worked there when HLW, LAW, and the Lab for the vitrification project were just holes in the ground. The people working on this project are committed to getting the project running, but it cannot be rushed as frustrating as it is, the results of an accident are still too great. Meanwhile, decay of the tanks marches on while efforts to encapsulate them continues. There isn’t only the remnants of the Manhattan Project there, but also the reactor sections of decommissioned nuclear submarines out in the open for satellite confirmation and scheduled inspections as well. Access to the Hanford site is restricted so the area remains mostly sealed from the public. For the time I lived there, I enjoyed it very much, the weather was superb and the rivers, wineries and tourism opportunities were plentiful, but you have to remember that a lot of things are hours away by car. I’m proud of the bit I did to help the vitrification project and I’m still in contact with some of my colleagues to this day.
I live near this site and have worked there as a off-site contractor.At the end of this video I am actually operating one of the concrete pumps seen placing concrete.The slab is storage casks which I pumped the concrete for them off-site
My mother started working at Hanford when it was being built. She was a nurse in the hospital there. She, and everyone else working there, were told that they would be able to tell their grandchildren that they helped win the war. Of course every defense plant told their workers the same thing. But after a few months she was convinced that, while she didn't know exactly what was being done, it was bigger than any other project she'd seen in size and scope. She hated the weather, 'hotter than hell in the summer and colder than hell in the winter and always wind blowing dust everywhere'. Once a fellow nurse told her that she had heard of a similar project in New Mexico and while neither of them knew anything about New Mexico they figured it had to be better than Hanford. So they went to personnel and asked for transfer papers to 'The New Mexico Project'. One day later they were escorted to a building and grilled by the FBI about what they knew about "The New Mexico Project'. Who told them? Who had they told? What did they think was being done in both Hanford and New Mexico? Finally both broke down into tears and they were let go but warned to not speak of any of this particularly the New Mexico angle. 'To be honest they pretty much convinced me that there wasn't even a state of New Mexico'. She left before Hiroshima and was in Oregon when the bomb was dropped. As soon as she heard of the powerful bomb she knew that she had worked on some part of that bomb. I've often wondered if the FBI still has any files of this encounter. She passed away in 1995 of a congenital heart problem. She always wondered if she'd contract some form of cancer.
It wasn't until decades later that the public learned about the number of workers in Manhattan facilities that contracted cancer. The workers themselves were not even told. Have you heard about the "Shoe X-ray machines that shoe stores had so people could see how their foot fit inside the show? After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were dropped, the public began to think that shoe x-rays were not such a good idea.
A ton of people in that area got thyroid cancer, the waste leakage is definitely a problem Also, sometime pretty recently, the state of Washington sued them for contractor fraud - multi hundred millions of dollars
I visited and toured the Hanford site 2 years ago. It was very well done and I learned quite a bit. I highly recommend for those interested and it's free.
Around 2008 I was studying for my history undergrad in Walla Walla and my class got to tour the B reactor on a field trip. We learned about the clean-up plans and all that. I'll never forget the sheer size of everything. It is staggering. Thank you for this video.
Im a nuclear chemical operator at the 105 KW reactor. Just about a mile away from the B reactor. We were also a plutonium producing reactor. We are in the historic end stages of fully deconstructing the last reactor of its kinds and I can say without a doubt this kind of work takes a lot of time, skill, and caution. For the most part we are dealing with the storage facility within the reactor that held spent fuel rods and other equipment/ materials used that have been contaminated or radiated. These materials are stored in a 1.5 million gallon, 20 ft deep pool of water that we are now currently in the processes of draining and grouting for further deconstruction of the facility; ultimately leading to cocooning the skeleton of the reactor left behind to decay. I walk by that huge wall of fuel cells every day and the thought always hits me “I am standing in the birth place of the monsters that will destroy the world”
There was underground workings from a retired missile site under my high school baseball field. They would be evident every spring with frost lines, and differential grass growth. Think septic tank on steroids. It was fairly normal from there I moved a couple miles away from a over the horizon radar site.
@@bocadelcieloplaya3852 fish don't get too big in the Columbia but we got alot of fertile individuals around here. The "joke" growing up was there's "something" in the water.
I grew up near Hanford. One of my clearest memories as a child was being able to see the steam plumes on the horizon. My grandmother worked there her whole adult life (which is likely what lead to her small cell lung and liver cancer that eventually claimed her life). The town of white bluff was not bulldozed until the late 90’s if memory serves. My grandmother took us there once as I was growing up. I couldn’t fathom the implications at the time. My sons aunt has worked there on the cleanup crew most of her adult life and will likely work there until she retires. It truly is mind boggling.
For decades the high schools in the Hanford area posted the highest test scores in the entire country. Directly due to the huge number of scientists who lived there with their families.
@@grunthostheflatulent9649 That's what we're told. For example, look how powerful China has become. I guess they've been importing people from Africa & Europe.
@@melainewhite6409 They've become strong from stealing other peoples ideas and countries using their huge labour force. Japan/Korea are innovators, China is not. China was a predominantly agrarian society until the 50's.
I live literally 12 miles from the Hanford site. The work that still goes on there has turned what was a small farming community (which my dad grew up in) to a modern, quickly growing, well funded group of cities where I live today. We have our issues like most of WA, but the growth the Hanford site and workers has provided to our local economy is truly staggering.
I worked there for five years. Was into most labs in 100 and 200 area. Worked the Fast Flux Test Facility security along with site security. Knew lots of people who were there from the early days Carrying a dosimeter all day was a reminder of the seriousness of the job. Knew the ceramicist who cut open the first fuel rod from the 100 series reactors. Lots of scary stories.
i lived near the hanford site. the old neighborhoods around the area were old military barracks converted now for civilian use. Some of the streets built for the workers had names like Proton, Neutron, etc. Pretty cool place, loved the people of Tri-Cities.
The decommissioned submarine reactors that are in Hanford are amazing. They represent decades of sailors and their amazing disappearing machines. Today’s boats would be impossible without nuclear power.
I really enjoyed this video. My grand father was plant operator at the site from the late 40s to the late 70s, and my dad was an industrial engineer out there from the late 70s unto the 90s. I grew up just south in Richland. Where our high-school mascot is the bombers represented by the Mushroom cloud and "A Days Pay" a B 17 Bomber that everyone working at the site gave up a days pay to finance. So much history out there. And the site is still making history with L.I.G.O. and other projects.
My dad worked later at N reactor as a reactor tech, now does nuclear engineering. But I've grown up with hanford in my backyard, lots of friends work out there. Definitely lots of cleanup to do. I still love when I head to the valley for work and get to see the old reactors and power plants on my drive.
I worked at Hanford's "N" reactor from 1978 to 1986. Some of the older guys I worked with were around during the Manhattan Project. The government had changed the names of certain things, probably to prevent spies from getting information. A radiation zone was called a "danger zone," dosimeters were called "pencils," anti-contamination clothing was called "SWPs" because it was used for "Special Work Permits" (entry into contaminated areas), and the main radiation survey meter was called a "Cutie Pie" because its geometry was Q=2 * pi. There are many stories that came from the site...not all interesting maybe...
Gee, I hope you & all of your coworkers are given proper equipment to protect yourselves. That's not something to be taken lightly, which I'm sure you're well aware of. Thank-you for your service. 🫡 🇺🇸 🙏❤️🙏❤️🙏❤️
@@magking1971 you're not wrong, but as a young man under thirty, you can't make a bad home purchase around here. Property values are going up indefinitely, and if you are into home renovations, you can buy/sell, and find yourself in a very nice house while at a mediocre job, in a few short years. Maybe even move yourself to a town more worth your while 😅
Right? People hear Wa and think Seattle and trees. Nope. Try high steppe desert with lots of sage brush and tumble weeds. Without the dams we couldn't live here.
Live about 30 minutes from Hanford and I still remember decades back if you got to close to the site armed guards would stop you asking what your doing so close and make you leave. The workers had to ride a bus to work everyday.
@@villesaarenketo2506 Used it to mix up stuff for testing or analysis. I know that a blender was used for mixing/pulverizing some lab samples for analysis.
I love farm lands. But one thing I love about the Hanford site is driving across it makes me feel like a pioneer. Its what the rest if Eastern Washington must have looked like before it was irrigated and turned into farmland. It's one of my favorite places to drive! My wife grew up there, my dad and father-in-law both worked there. I enjoy that part of the world.
There's another big reason they chose eastern Washington for the site. Easy access to massive amounts of hydroelectric power provided by the recently completed Grand Coulee Dam and several other hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River. The cooling pumps to cool the Plutonium reactors along with the rest of the massive complex at Hanford uses huge amounts of electricity. The three Uranium reactors at the site did not produce electricity at all but were instead dedicated to making the U-238 needed for Plutonium production.
Hanford was the predecessor to the Savannah River Site facility in South Carolina that opened in 1950. I grew up near there and they are going through the same clean up process after years of plutonium production in multiple reactors. Decades of work remain there as well.
Seaborg wasn't the Director at Hanford during the Manhattan Project. He was still at the Met Lab in Chicago (or maybe in Clinton, TN at some point), working on plutonium separation chemistry. Col. Franklin Matthias was the area engineer for the Army, and Crawford Greenewalt was DuPont's chief engineer for the project.
The Hanford Site cleanup one of many similar projects across the US. Thank you for telling Hanford’s story, including its mission, people, closure, and impact.
This is my hometown!! So cool. My Kids are 4th generation Richland High students. And while publicly the mascot has been changed to “The Days Pay” aircraft. The real mascot is a mushroom cloud, and it’s very common to see “Proud of the Cloud” t-shirts at the grocery store. Love it here!!
I can't believe that Richland High School actually changed their nickname! I lived in the Tri-Cities for about the first 20 years of my life and returned frequently while my parents lived there. The three cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) might squabble like siblings; but, one of the things they would come together about was shutting down "Politically Correct" outsiders who came to town to tell us uneducated heathens that RHS needed to change it's nickname.
When I was a Junior in college studying Chemical Engineering, Bechtel came recruiting, and one of the cutting edge projects they were working on was the vitrification of the waste at Hanford.
@@bdjm8595 also a prison was built next to Hanford Site at Horn Rapids on the Yakima River. Called Camp Columbia, the prison housed conscientious objectors. I Love your channel (s)!!!
Yes, Richland High School is nicknamed the Bombers. And, every few years some busy bodies from outside Eastern Washington try to make the school change its nickname. They are firmly; but, politely shown the door. The nickname of Richland High School (RHS) comes from the fact that during the war the majority of the workers donated a day's pay to help the government purchase a bomber. I think it was either a B-17, or a B-29. The plane was named "Day's Pay"
My dad was a Chemical Operator at Hanford during the 80s, he then went to get his batchlors at the University of Washington and returned as a Criticality Safety Engineer through most of the 90s. We then met my mom, who was a contract secretary working in the same building. After they got married they drove here to New York so he could get a PHD at Cornell (sadly didn't), then I came along.
Around 2008 I was working in the valve industry. We had to design and build special, high reliability valves for this decontamination project (or customer was Bechtel). Aside from x-raying each valve to ensure no internal faults (expensive, as Cobalt 60 had to be used for this), they had to be designed such that should the internal seals had to be changed, it could all be done by robots. No one is stepping foot on those grounds for decades once vitrification starts.
So without videos such as this only a small percentage of the world's population would even know the place existed? Cool. I wonder how many people would know about the coal mine incident in Centralia, Illinois, if it weren't for the internet? I've known about it nearly my whole life.
I'm a historian and docent of the Hanford site, I work for DOE and Washington State University, and although you got some details wrong overall this really isn't bad and pretty informative for under 20 minutes. We have a national park here, come take a tour sometime (there is more than just the Hanford High School left from the Pre-Manhattan days btw).
I lived for seven years in the Tri-Cities (the metro area next to Hanford). I used the word "boondoggle" to describe the cleanup to a friend, and though she never had heard the term, when I defined it she said that the Hanford site needed to be in the dictionary under "boondoggle". Then I moved to Wyoming, and when I say I moved from Washington they ask if I'm used to the dryness, and I get to tell them that Kennewick gets less than half the precipitation than Cheyenne. And then they don't believe me.
I moved to central WA from the South. Took years for me to adjust to the dryness. Folks thought I was crazy for saying how the heatwave of 2021 felt like my first real summer there even 😂
I’m so glad Simon did a video about Hanford. Most of the videos and credit for the success of the manhattan project goes to Oak Ridge or los Alamos. Hanford gets a side note in history even tho it produced the uranium for the bomb on Nagasaki
My family never worked on the Hanford site itself, but I grew up in the area. Thank you for covering something that's not only incredibly important to the history of World War II, but also my home town. The Tri-Cities would not exist if it weren't for the Hanford Site, and is still home to an incredible nuclear research industry as a result of it. Over 230,000 people live here.
I live nearby, and this place has always mystified me. Thanks for going into it. Considering the Geographics Video on the Seattle Underground was what got me to subscribe to your channels, this is a treat!
Great! I'm surprised you did this! Hanford site has a very interesting history. From creating the nuclear material required for bombs, during a time where segregation between races was still a thing. To a massive clean up effort to keep the Columbia river safe, and the people that live in the Tri-Cities. Thank you for this! Sincerely, Hanford Site Mechanical Engineer.
I lived just over the hills from the Hanford Nuclear Range. I lived in Sunnyside WA. There was a high cancer rate among the workers and valley residents in the Yakima Valley. The neighbor behind us was an engineer at Hanford and died of cancer. My Grandfather worked on the site and died of cancer.
I wonder if some of those cancers weren't caused by some of the toxic chemicals that used to be, and in some cases, still are used in agriculture. I'm not denying that some activities undertaken at the Hanford Reservation contributed to the increased cancer rate. But, there are other factors that need to be recognized too.
We still do. That and Bomber plane. Very proud of my City and the scientific advancements. It used to be called Columbia High School. That’s what to look up if you’re interested.
Even for someone who spent most of their life in the PNW, this place is very under the radar. I wasn't even aware of it until I took a wrong turn and drove to it. The vast majority of us are unaware of it's significance.
There was also a Military Reactor accident at Hanford. The Three operators were killed and a Nurse and an Ambulance Driver died later from exposure to radiation. The three operators are buried on site due to high levels of radiation ....... their graves are NEVER snow covered !
I'm not sure if we're thinking about the same accident; but, if we are, it happened at a Naval reactor design facility in Idaho. According to one story, I can not vouch for accuracy or truth, claimed that a steam explosion drove fuel rods out of the top of an experimental reactor and pinned the corpse of at least one technician/operator to the ceiling of the reactor room.
Depending on if it is open the B reactor tour was amazing. People from all over the world were on it. It is amazing learning how many people who live here in the tri cities have never been on it.
I live near there, The Tri-Cities and especially Richland is proud of its atomic heritage. There are also limited tours that people can get of the Handford cleanup. You can also get a Tour of the B reactor, it's a pretty sweet tour and a lot of fun. You can also get tour of Pre-Hanford which gives tours of White Bluffs and old Hanford. Hanford does still have an active Nuclear reactor on it, it is for power generation though. There are also now plans to build two new next-gen Nuclear plants on the site as well.
Oak Ridge was still used to enrich the Uranium to a higher concentration of U235, while the Hanford site was used to produce the Plutonium. Uranium enrichment does not require nuclear reactions, so it was relatively safe to continue the process at Oak Ridge before sending material to Hanford to be converted.
The video is pretty accurate. I didn't hear anything about purex, PFP, K-basin and FFTF or the underground railway they have out at Hanford. They also have tunnels with the ambulances that took the atomic man to the hospital. Those tunnels are locked and barricaded off underground. I've worked out there for many years. The post office still stands as well at Hanford. Overall 👍🏼👍🏼 keep up the great videos!
@@masterrafferty4065 k. I'm in Bremerton, i know all the names. But until like 20 years ago the Hanford site was still classified. I'm pretty sure Clinton declassified it when it was named a Superfund site.
I meant it quite literally. A large portion of the population form the tri cities came to that area for employment at Hanford back in the day or to support families that worked there. The population boomed during that period.
Technically it is not a desert, but a dry platue. Second, there has been and still remains active neuclear reactors at Hanford, including 3 that are in mothball and remain being maintained in case they are needed. While the cleanup of the nuclear waste from WW2 and continued production of nuclear power is massive and on going, including the warming of the columbia river from the water being returned to the river from the cooling towers there is a lot of science still being performed at hanford which employes thousands and not all being cleanup crews.
They've done videos on at least two soviet sites, one nuclear and one biological. It would seem the Soviets have even less concern for their citizens than the USA government.
@@michaelb1761 What, you're saying using lake water to directly cool your nuclear reactor is a bad idea?? Psshhhh. Also the radioactive waste?? Straight to the lake, it's fiinneeee.
Thank you Simon I appreciate the fact that you make all these videos and that you have multiple channels so I can always have something interesting that I want to watch even if I'm not interested in some of the content there's always something in the slew of videos that you release every day that I'm wanting to watch I hope this doesn't sound creepy but sometimes when I'm watching your videos at night because you have such a soothing voice I fall asleep to your videos so thank you Simon for the good night's rest
I grew up in Washington State, and graduated from high school in 80’s. Every year we had a football tournament in Tacoma where I’m from. Sometimes we’d get teams in from Eastern Washington, in this case we ran into kids from Hanford (they built a new high school in the 1940’s). They had cool letterman jackets, they said, “Hanford Bombers”. The graphic on the jacket was a B-17 surrounded by electrons with a mushroom cloud in the background.
As a child of a World War II combat veteran I met a LOT of WW II combat and non-combat veterans. Never once did I hear one regret building those bombs or using those bombs on Japan! “Good” and “bad” are about perspective. The live lobsters in a lobster tank on the Titanic would look upon that fateful evening as a miracle!
Simon mentions the occupants of Hanford and White Bluffs being moved; but did you know that the *cemetery* was moved, too? The caskets and bodies were exhumed and moved to a new cemetery in nearby Prosser, WA.
This video makes Hanford sound much worse then it actually is. As someone who grew up in Washington, Hanford is not some major ecological disaster that everyone is worried about. They are storing a lot of nuclear waste there and there has been a cleanup plan in progress to remove it and store it in a more secure specialized facility for thirty years that has been blocked by political bureaucracy. The issue is not so much a nuclear wasteland that is unusable, as it is a site that has been forced to store nuclear waste long term instead of temporarily. Beyond that, the site is currently used for other purposes such as the LIGO experiment. In some ways the site is a testing ground on how to deal with nuclear waste and it's cleanup, unlike other countries like Russia where the focus is abandonment and ignoring the impact, instead of focusing on how to learn about possible long term effects and adapt processes.
You don't have to imagine. The purpose of Chernobyl (other than generating power obviously) was to manufacture weapons grade nuclear material. And we can see how that turned out. China I don't know.
@@ADAMJWAITE There are still leaking tanks and that's bad. But you're right, it's not like it's crazy dangerous or anything. Just not ideal and something that needs to be dealt with.
@Bob Fleming Oh wow, you mean to say plutonium isotopes are dangerous? I had no idea at all. Thank you for your big brain thoughts. The placement and concentrations of the radioactive substances at Hanford are not crazy dangerous. I swim downstream from it all the time. Millions of people live downstream and tens of thousands live around the place. People eat fish from the Columbia all over the world. Hanford is not crazy dangerous as things stand, like I said. But thanks for the pointless comment my guy.
I actually recognize the men in some of these photos. 1:18 is Dr Norris Bradbury, standing next to The Gadget. He was later to be director at Los Alamos for several decades. He oversaw the assembly of The Gadget.
It should be pointed out that the majority of the solid waste at Hanford is what would be termed low-level. It was generated in the same manner as the low-level radioactive waste generated by your local hospital, just not nearly as potentially dangerous. What happened is that facilities working with radioactive materials had a point past which you had to wear coveralls, gloves, etc. Anything which went past this point was considered "waste", whether contaminated or not. When you left the exclusion area your protective clothing went into a barrel for disposal as "waste", even if it had no detectable contamination. Ditto for wastebasket contents, paper towels from the bathroom, etc. Further, most contamination which IS present are Alpha Emitters. Need to shield yourself from Alpha Radiation? A sheet of paper from your printer will block Alpha particles just fine, as will your skin. In general terms, a banana will have more Alpha activity due to the potassium content than a barrel of low-level waste has.
The hydroelectric power plant at Grand Coulee dam, also in Eastern Washington state is the largest power plant in the U.S. at 6.81 Gigawatts capacity. The largest nuclear power plant is Palo Verde with a capacity of 3.9 Gigawatts.
The project needed a place to house workers, so the government repossessed the nearby village of Richland using Eminent Domain, and built a city. Richland went from only about 200 people to over 40,000. The government owned all the land, and built all the houses. The houses were built in tracts and neighborhoods with only a limited number of plans. In typical official style, these plans were labeled A, B, C, and so on. These original houses are still there, and are locally known as 'alphabet houses'. It wasn't until decades later that the DoE relented and people were allowed to purchase land in Richland.
Between my studies of The Manhattan Project and America's early nuclear program, as well as having spent much of my summers growing up in the shadow of the Hanford Site, this video was fascinating and right up my alley.
I have lived for 56 years with the Hanford reactor in my back yard. What my parents told me and what I told my kids might shock you. If the reactor goes don’t worry about hiding under your desk. Go outside and watch the show. It’s better to die instantly than it is to die from radiation poisoning. I’ve never been afraid of it. In fact we joke that we glow in the dark. I own one of the military alphabet houses. Our history is interesting. How smaller towns merged to become the greater Tri-Cities area.
The snag is that nuke reactors don’t explode like nuke bombs. Reactors scatter poison whereas bombs flash and blast the locals AND poison everything downwind.
Born in 2002 and lived in alphabet homes my house life until I got an apartment at 20. But I've always been shocked at how well they have held up for being built as cheap as possible
I assume there is a Soviet version of Hanford. Would be interested in that Megaproject too. One thing to note, the cost to clean Hanford up pales in comparison to the perceived economic benefit it provided. All of those nuclear weapons guaranteed a form of peace, which allowed our economy to develop and grow. Our economy has generated hundreds of trillions of dollars since the end of WW2. So spending a few hundred billion to clean up the mess is worth it. Maybe. Nonetheless, it's expected that you clean up any messes you make.
@@harpospondlife4910 ...yes....Osersk......or Ozyorsk.....or Mayak....or Chelyabinsk....whichever you want to call it. That was USSR's equivalent to Hanford....but the final result (so far) is much worse. It is still the #2 worst radiological event/location/disaster in the world behind Chernobyl.
I live in Kentucky. Paducah, KY holds an enormous amount of nuclear waste of all types. Paducah is on the banks of the Mississippi river which has experienced huge floods and actually shifting positions at times. Scary
i’m sad you didn’t talk about the Green Run or the tests they did on animals and incarcerated people there!!! definitely an important part of Hanford history
also sad you didn’t mention the horrible workers rights violations over the years. Hanford (and all DOE sites) are not overseen by OSHA so the nonprofit organization The Hanford Challenge is the only organization that’s even trying to regulate the way workers are treated and protected at Hanford
Several factors were involved: out of range of Japanese carrier based aircraft, lots of water for reactor cooling, isolated for security, near major railroad lines, good supply of gravel for concrete, plus others I'm forgetting.
Check out Squarespace: squarespace.com/MEGAPROJECTS for 10% off on your first purchase.
Please make a video about Bar Lev Line, costing around $300 million in 1973.
Are you the brother of Michael from Vsauce?
You should cover the Soviet industrial evacuation to the Ural mountains during the early stages of Barbarossa in WWII, probably one of the biggest mega projects in history!
@@anydaynow01 +1
Do an episode about the Santa Susana Field laboratory , they did research for rocket engines for the Apollo program and they had 10 nuclear reactors over it's decades of operation.
In 1972 the tv show 60 Minutes had a segment about Hanford. They had gotten waterfowl (ducks) that had come through the area on their southern migration from Canada. These ducks ate corn from fields that had been harvested in the area, then they flew back to the Columbia river to rest or whatever. They found that these ducks had a high-concentration of radioactivity probably from sitting on the river. My family used to hunt ducks both on the river and in the corn fields. We ate 100s of ducks and geese from 1965 to 1971 from that area. It was legal to hunt on the Hanford side of the river until about 71 then Hanford guards would make you leave. In 70 guards landed a helicopter by our hunting site, decoys and all that, they thought we had come in from the Hanford side of the river which would have entailed about 25 miles of carrying our boat across the desert, haha, they weren't the brightest bunch, we put our boat in at Ringold Springs area. We quit hunting their in 71, my mother and father lived to be in their late 90s so I guess the waterfowl meat didnt effect us. Have a nice day.
My mother worked at Hanford beginning around 1975. She started off doing non-destructive testing of welds for the pipes in one of the reactors which was being built at the time. She said nothing would piss a man off more than having a woman tell them their weld was bad. Sometime in the '80s she was passing through one of the radiation detectors while leaving work and set it off. The people on site who dealt with such matters wanted her to completely strip so she could be scrubbed down, just like in the movie Silkwood. My mother very firmly told them no, she would take her overalls off first then go through the detector again. That is what she did, and it turned out the contamination was limited to some alpha particles on the outside of those overalls. My mother worked for a variety of contractors through the years doing a variety of jobs. She was a project planner, assisting with one of the many ongoing clean-up projects, when she retired in 2015. As a kid growing up in the area surrounding Hanford, my friends and I all know the importance and history of the Hanford site. We are also very much aware of the legacy of contamination which has been left behind.
My mom grew up near Hanford and she is the only one in the family that never worked there. My great-grandfather was an electrician that worked on the initial construction, my grandfather was a heavy equipment operator, my aunt was an administrative assistant, and my grandmother was a secretary. My grandmother had top-secret security clearance, so my mom has told me about how when she was younger she thought it was normal for the FBI to come visit your house to interview everyone.
FBI or a martial from the OPM? We get them (OPM) every once and a while when our neighbors get a security clearance rise.
That makes sense, I’ve lived near there a long time and there isn’t much to do for work unless you want to have an orchard or go to the triciries!
Wow! What a great comment. Having family that worked there. What are your feelings about the video?
@@kellym3610 Yeah Mattawa and D.A are pretty empty tbh all there is for work is fields
I am surprised that so many people from around the tri-cities areas are actually all watching the same video, I always thought that our little east side of Washington is always forgotten about and the west side is the only acknowledged part of our state.
I worked there when HLW, LAW, and the Lab for the vitrification project were just holes in the ground. The people working on this project are committed to getting the project running, but it cannot be rushed as frustrating as it is, the results of an accident are still too great. Meanwhile, decay of the tanks marches on while efforts to encapsulate them continues. There isn’t only the remnants of the Manhattan Project there, but also the reactor sections of decommissioned nuclear submarines out in the open for satellite confirmation and scheduled inspections as well. Access to the Hanford site is restricted so the area remains mostly sealed from the public. For the time I lived there, I enjoyed it very much, the weather was superb and the rivers, wineries and tourism opportunities were plentiful, but you have to remember that a lot of things are hours away by car. I’m proud of the bit I did to help the vitrification project and I’m still in contact with some of my colleagues to this day.
"The destroyer of words." Well you sure murdered those words Simon.
I heard that, too! 🤣
AHHAHAHA! 😂😂😂😂
Yep, I caught that!
Language is hard sometimes
Yea, caught that one myself
What do you expect from someone who speaks metric?
I live near this site and have worked there as a off-site contractor.At the end of this video I am actually operating one of the concrete pumps seen placing concrete.The slab is storage casks which I pumped the concrete for them off-site
My mother started working at Hanford when it was being built. She was a nurse in the hospital there. She, and everyone else working there, were told that they would be able to tell their grandchildren that they helped win the war. Of course every defense plant told their workers the same thing. But after a few months she was convinced that, while she didn't know exactly what was being done, it was bigger than any other project she'd seen in size and scope. She hated the weather, 'hotter than hell in the summer and colder than hell in the winter and always wind blowing dust everywhere'.
Once a fellow nurse told her that she had heard of a similar project in New Mexico and while neither of them knew anything about New Mexico they figured it had to be better than Hanford. So they went to personnel and asked for transfer papers to 'The New Mexico Project'. One day later they were escorted to a building and grilled by the FBI about what they knew about "The New Mexico Project'. Who told them? Who had they told? What did they think was being done in both Hanford and New Mexico?
Finally both broke down into tears and they were let go but warned to not speak of any of this particularly the New Mexico angle. 'To be honest they pretty much convinced me that there wasn't even a state of New Mexico'.
She left before Hiroshima and was in Oregon when the bomb was dropped. As soon as she heard of the powerful bomb she knew that she had worked on some part of that bomb.
I've often wondered if the FBI still has any files of this encounter. She passed away in 1995 of a congenital heart problem. She always wondered if she'd contract some form of cancer.
It wasn't until decades later that the public learned about the number of workers in Manhattan facilities that contracted cancer. The workers themselves were not even told. Have you heard about the "Shoe X-ray machines that shoe stores had so people could see how their foot fit inside the show? After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were dropped, the public began to think that shoe x-rays were not such a good idea.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! I used to live in Richland.... extraordinarily bad weather.
A ton of people in that area got thyroid cancer, the waste leakage is definitely a problem
Also, sometime pretty recently, the state of Washington sued them for contractor fraud - multi hundred millions of dollars
I visited and toured the Hanford site 2 years ago. It was very well done and I learned quite a bit. I highly recommend for those interested and it's free.
What about the radiation?
Around 2008 I was studying for my history undergrad in Walla Walla and my class got to tour the B reactor on a field trip. We learned about the clean-up plans and all that. I'll never forget the sheer size of everything. It is staggering. Thank you for this video.
Im a nuclear chemical operator at the 105 KW reactor. Just about a mile away from the B reactor. We were also a plutonium producing reactor. We are in the historic end stages of fully deconstructing the last reactor of its kinds and I can say without a doubt this kind of work takes a lot of time, skill, and caution. For the most part we are dealing with the storage facility within the reactor that held spent fuel rods and other equipment/ materials used that have been contaminated or radiated. These materials are stored in a 1.5 million gallon, 20 ft deep pool of water that we are now currently in the processes of draining and grouting for further deconstruction of the facility; ultimately leading to cocooning the skeleton of the reactor left behind to decay. I walk by that huge wall of fuel cells every day and the thought always hits me “I am standing in the birth place of the monsters that will destroy the world”
I grew up just across the river from Hanford. Even attended Hanford High School. It seemed normal to grow up next to all this happening.
Do you also posses the state record for Large mouth bass?
There was underground workings from a retired missile site under my high school baseball field. They would be evident every spring with frost lines, and differential grass growth. Think septic tank on steroids. It was fairly normal from there I moved a couple miles away from a over the horizon radar site.
I live approx 45 mins from here. Father in law was a nuclear operator before he decided to retire.
@@bocadelcieloplaya3852 fish don't get too big in the Columbia but we got alot of fertile individuals around here. The "joke" growing up was there's "something" in the water.
@@disruptfulninja9188 lmao im up the Columbia from Hanford
I grew up near Hanford. One of my clearest memories as a child was being able to see the steam plumes on the horizon. My grandmother worked there her whole adult life (which is likely what lead to her small cell lung and liver cancer that eventually claimed her life). The town of white bluff was not bulldozed until the late 90’s if memory serves. My grandmother took us there once as I was growing up. I couldn’t fathom the implications at the time.
My sons aunt has worked there on the cleanup crew most of her adult life and will likely work there until she retires. It truly is mind boggling.
OMG you're finally covering Hanford. I grew up across the river from there. That's where I got this nice healthy glow.
For decades the high schools in the Hanford area posted the highest test scores in the entire country.
Directly due to the huge number of scientists who lived there with their families.
You sure it wasn't due to diversity?
@@melainewhite6409
DiVErSIty Is oUr sTreNgTh
@@grunthostheflatulent9649 That's what we're told. For example, look how powerful China has become. I guess they've been importing people from Africa & Europe.
@@melainewhite6409
They've become strong from stealing other peoples ideas and countries using their huge labour force.
Japan/Korea are innovators, China is not.
China was a predominantly agrarian society until the 50's.
I went to Hanford High School, and my senior year we had two students score 100% on the SAT.
I live literally 12 miles from the Hanford site. The work that still goes on there has turned what was a small farming community (which my dad grew up in) to a modern, quickly growing, well funded group of cities where I live today. We have our issues like most of WA, but the growth the Hanford site and workers has provided to our local economy is truly staggering.
I worked there for five years. Was into most labs in 100 and 200 area. Worked the Fast Flux Test Facility security along with site security. Knew lots of people who were there from the early days Carrying a dosimeter all day was a reminder of the seriousness of the job. Knew the ceramicist who cut open the first fuel rod from the 100 series reactors. Lots of scary stories.
The book “The Apocalypse Factory” goes into great detail about the Hanford site.
i lived near the hanford site. the old neighborhoods around the area were old military barracks converted now for civilian use. Some of the streets built for the workers had names like Proton, Neutron, etc. Pretty cool place, loved the people of Tri-Cities.
The decommissioned submarine reactors that are in Hanford are amazing. They represent decades of sailors and their amazing disappearing machines. Today’s boats would be impossible without nuclear power.
I really enjoyed this video. My grand father was plant operator at the site from the late 40s to the late 70s, and my dad was an industrial engineer out there from the late 70s unto the 90s. I grew up just south in Richland. Where our high-school mascot is the bombers represented by the Mushroom cloud and "A Days Pay" a B 17 Bomber that everyone working at the site gave up a days pay to finance. So much history out there. And the site is still making history with L.I.G.O. and other projects.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of words." Simon's slip made this so much better. 😂
My dad worked later at N reactor as a reactor tech, now does nuclear engineering. But I've grown up with hanford in my backyard, lots of friends work out there. Definitely lots of cleanup to do. I still love when I head to the valley for work and get to see the old reactors and power plants on my drive.
I worked at Hanford's "N" reactor from 1978 to 1986. Some of the older guys I worked with were around during the Manhattan Project. The government had changed the names of certain things, probably to prevent spies from getting information. A radiation zone was called a "danger zone," dosimeters were called "pencils," anti-contamination clothing was called "SWPs" because it was used for "Special Work Permits" (entry into contaminated areas), and the main radiation survey meter was called a "Cutie Pie" because its geometry was Q=2 * pi. There are many stories that came from the site...not all interesting maybe...
I'm in my 30th year of employment for the clean-up of Hanford. This is one of the better vids I've seen about its history.
The never-ending project
Thank you very much for your commitment to the site remediation there. Take care.
How's it going at the lazy h.ranch in the dry shities?
Gee, I hope you & all of your coworkers are given proper equipment to protect yourselves. That's not something to be taken lightly, which I'm sure you're well aware of. Thank-you for your service. 🫡 🇺🇸 🙏❤️🙏❤️🙏❤️
Thank you for your service for the future of all mankind.
I love seeing all the comments about the Tricities area. Born and raised here!
Condolences
@@magking1971 you're not wrong, but as a young man under thirty, you can't make a bad home purchase around here. Property values are going up indefinitely, and if you are into home renovations, you can buy/sell, and find yourself in a very nice house while at a mediocre job, in a few short years. Maybe even move yourself to a town more worth your while 😅
Been 2 year but had to update I moved out of here😂
Is it just me, or did it sound like Simon said, "I have become death, the destroyer of words."? lol
That's what I heard too :).
He certainly did!
I have become shitpost, destroyer of words
No, he misread it.
I've witnessed him absolutely destroy words like controversy and methane.
Finally someone acknowledges that Washington has desert!
And that there IS a Washington besides DC.
Right? People hear Wa and think Seattle and trees.
Nope. Try high steppe desert with lots of sage brush and tumble weeds. Without the dams we couldn't live here.
@@silasclayton7777 it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen
Lol I guess all the outsiders think the entire PNW is one massive rain forest?
I think, but am not entirely sure that Washington has the most diverse range of climates of all 50 US states
Live about 30 minutes from Hanford and I still remember decades back if you got to close to the site armed guards would stop you asking what your doing so close and make you leave. The workers had to ride a bus to work everyday.
12:09... Is that a Kitchenaid mixer?... I've always wanted one of those.
I noticed that too! I wonder what they did with it😁
@@villesaarenketo2506 Used it to mix up stuff for testing or analysis. I know that a blender was used for mixing/pulverizing some lab samples for analysis.
to whisk away the plutonium XD
07:45
I love farm lands. But one thing I love about the Hanford site is driving across it makes me feel like a pioneer. Its what the rest if Eastern Washington must have looked like before it was irrigated and turned into farmland. It's one of my favorite places to drive! My wife grew up there, my dad and father-in-law both worked there. I enjoy that part of the world.
There's another big reason they chose eastern Washington for the site. Easy access to massive amounts of hydroelectric power provided by the recently completed Grand Coulee Dam and several other hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River. The cooling pumps to cool the Plutonium reactors along with the rest of the massive complex at Hanford uses huge amounts of electricity. The three Uranium reactors at the site did not produce electricity at all but were instead dedicated to making the U-238 needed for Plutonium production.
Hanford was the predecessor to the Savannah River Site facility in South Carolina that opened in 1950. I grew up near there and they are going through the same clean up process after years of plutonium production in multiple reactors. Decades of work remain there as well.
"Now I am become Simon, the Destroyer Of Words..."
😉
A shout out to Glenn T. Seaborg, Nobel Laureate, discoverer of Plutonium, Berkeley Prof, and first director of Hanford during the Manhattan Project.
Namesake of Seaborgium
Seaborg wasn't the Director at Hanford during the Manhattan Project. He was still at the Met Lab in Chicago (or maybe in Clinton, TN at some point), working on plutonium separation chemistry.
Col. Franklin Matthias was the area engineer for the Army, and Crawford Greenewalt was DuPont's chief engineer for the project.
The Hanford Site cleanup one of many similar projects across the US. Thank you for telling Hanford’s story, including its mission, people, closure, and impact.
My old man is a chemical engineer. Worked at Handford over twenty years. Works at Idaho Falls now. Crazy seeing all the history i grew up around.
Did he know milton vordhal?
@@findingd.b.cooper3766did mortin know ferry skeeter
This is my hometown!! So cool. My Kids are 4th generation Richland High students. And while publicly the mascot has been changed to “The Days Pay” aircraft. The real mascot is a mushroom cloud, and it’s very common to see “Proud of the Cloud” t-shirts at the grocery store. Love it here!!
I can't believe that Richland High School actually changed their nickname! I lived in the Tri-Cities for about the first 20 years of my life and returned frequently while my parents lived there. The three cities (Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) might squabble like siblings; but, one of the things they would come together about was shutting down "Politically Correct" outsiders who came to town to tell us uneducated heathens that RHS needed to change it's nickname.
When I was a Junior in college studying Chemical Engineering, Bechtel came recruiting, and one of the cutting edge projects they were working on was the vitrification of the waste at Hanford.
The reactor tour was cool. The genius plan for disposing of the waste, less so.
No economy around there if everything gets cleaned up and the job is done... just sayin'.
@@mrvector257 but there's vit plant! Oh, no wait. Uhhhh....PNNL! That's the ticket! Except it's not.
So, so glad I got out of there.
@@bateman2112 I'm still stuck here... a real shit hole, but the money is good for the time being.
@@mrvector257 I wish you well my friend and hope you get out while you're still on the right side of the grass.
@@bateman2112 Cant wait to see them put glass though the LAW and shut the whole thing down because they dont want to finish the HLW
I live in tri-Cities WA, the gateway to Hanford. It’s amazing to talk to the workers out there and the stuff they are constantly exposed to.
Down river and down wind from Hanford is a high school with the mascot “Bombers”
Indeed there is!!
@@bdjm8595 also a prison was built next to Hanford Site at Horn Rapids on the Yakima River. Called Camp Columbia, the prison housed conscientious objectors. I Love your channel (s)!!!
Yup, I graduated there 2013. Hanford High School is even closer to the site.
2011 alum here. One of our rivals was the other HS in Richland, Hanford HS.
Yes, Richland High School is nicknamed the Bombers. And, every few years some busy bodies from outside Eastern Washington try to make the school change its nickname. They are firmly; but, politely shown the door. The nickname of Richland High School (RHS) comes from the fact that during the war the majority of the workers donated a day's pay to help the government purchase a bomber. I think it was either a B-17, or a B-29. The plane was named "Day's Pay"
I actually live in Washington and just two miles from the Colombia River. The area that Hanford is in IS most definitely a desert.
*Shrub steppe*
Half the flag should be green the other half tan
@@fantomfang1100 hey the upper east corner is pretty green too. Go north of Spokane and it's high forest
Nuclear stuff is "nuclide". "Nucleotide" is a DNA thing.
I'm glad to see someone else caught the mix up between DNA and nuclear physics.
Dioxy Ribos Nucleic Acid. I before E except after C, and sometimes Y..and sometimes after CL.
My dad was a Chemical Operator at Hanford during the 80s, he then went to get his batchlors at the University of Washington and returned as a Criticality Safety Engineer through most of the 90s. We then met my mom, who was a contract secretary working in the same building. After they got married they drove here to New York so he could get a PHD at Cornell (sadly didn't), then I came along.
Around 2008 I was working in the valve industry. We had to design and build special, high reliability valves for this decontamination project (or customer was Bechtel). Aside from x-raying each valve to ensure no internal faults (expensive, as Cobalt 60 had to be used for this), they had to be designed such that should the internal seals had to be changed, it could all be done by robots. No one is stepping foot on those grounds for decades once vitrification starts.
I worked as a welders helper at a facility in New Mexico that built some of the structures and vessels for the cleanup of Hanford.
Anyone who lives in the Inland Northwest, as I do, has known about the Hanford site for years. It's been a feature of local politics.
Same with North Idaho, downwind from Hanford 🤮
So without videos such as this only a small percentage of the world's population would even know the place existed? Cool.
I wonder how many people would know about the coal mine incident in Centralia, Illinois, if it weren't for the internet? I've known about it nearly my whole life.
I'm a historian and docent of the Hanford site, I work for DOE and Washington State University, and although you got some details wrong overall this really isn't bad and pretty informative for under 20 minutes. We have a national park here, come take a tour sometime (there is more than just the Hanford High School left from the Pre-Manhattan days btw).
Also you showed a picture of a Breeder reactor, the Fast Flux Test Facility, as one of the things constructed in WWII. That's about 35 years off!
The DOE: somehow sketchier than the CIA.
I lived for seven years in the Tri-Cities (the metro area next to Hanford). I used the word "boondoggle" to describe the cleanup to a friend, and though she never had heard the term, when I defined it she said that the Hanford site needed to be in the dictionary under "boondoggle".
Then I moved to Wyoming, and when I say I moved from Washington they ask if I'm used to the dryness, and I get to tell them that Kennewick gets less than half the precipitation than Cheyenne. And then they don't believe me.
I moved to central WA from the South. Took years for me to adjust to the dryness. Folks thought I was crazy for saying how the heatwave of 2021 felt like my first real summer there even 😂
My grandfather and father worked there my dad was actually the control room supervisor of reactor B
Hanford is in my back yard. I've done the B reactor tour and it's amazing to see what was constructed in such a short amount of time.
I’m so glad Simon did a video about Hanford. Most of the videos and credit for the success of the manhattan project goes to Oak Ridge or los Alamos. Hanford gets a side note in history even tho it produced the uranium for the bomb on Nagasaki
The state record smallmouth bass was caught just downriver in the Hanford reach. Just saying
but did it have 3 eyes??? (The Simpsons)
@@edrdnc6706 it only had 2 eyes but 3 heads.
@@edrdnc6706 Blinky!
I've always thought that Groening used Hanford as the model for Burn"s nuclear plant
@@gowankommando i didn't think Hanford had cooling towers.
My family never worked on the Hanford site itself, but I grew up in the area. Thank you for covering something that's not only incredibly important to the history of World War II, but also my home town. The Tri-Cities would not exist if it weren't for the Hanford Site, and is still home to an incredible nuclear research industry as a result of it. Over 230,000 people live here.
I live nearby, and this place has always mystified me. Thanks for going into it.
Considering the Geographics Video on the Seattle Underground was what got me to subscribe to your channels, this is a treat!
Great! I'm surprised you did this! Hanford site has a very interesting history. From creating the nuclear material required for bombs, during a time where segregation between races was still a thing.
To a massive clean up effort to keep the Columbia river safe, and the people that live in the Tri-Cities. Thank you for this!
Sincerely,
Hanford Site Mechanical Engineer.
Nowadays one of the LIGO Observatory labs is located next to the Hanford nuclear facilities.
I lived just over the hills from the Hanford Nuclear Range. I lived in Sunnyside WA. There was a high cancer rate among the workers and valley residents in the Yakima Valley. The neighbor behind us was an engineer at Hanford and died of cancer. My Grandfather worked on the site and died of cancer.
I wonder if some of those cancers weren't caused by some of the toxic chemicals that used to be, and in some cases, still are used in agriculture. I'm not denying that some activities undertaken at the Hanford Reservation contributed to the increased cancer rate. But, there are other factors that need to be recognized too.
I think things have changed since, but when I was in high school the nearby city of Richland used a mushroom cloud as it's mascot.
Nope. Still Proud of the Cloud.
And the name of the high school team was and still is The Bombers.
@@nealfairbanks5340 thats epic😂
Thats great😂
We still do. That and Bomber plane. Very proud of my City and the scientific advancements. It used to be called Columbia High School. That’s what to look up if you’re interested.
Wow my hometown!! Shout out Richland High class of '90!!
Even for someone who spent most of their life in the PNW, this place is very under the radar. I wasn't even aware of it until I took a wrong turn and drove to it. The vast majority of us are unaware of it's significance.
It's on the news all the time for worker exposure. I dont know how yall would manage to be that oblivious.
There was also a Military Reactor accident at Hanford. The Three operators were killed and a Nurse and an Ambulance Driver died later from exposure to radiation. The three operators are buried on site due to high levels of radiation ....... their graves are NEVER snow covered !
I'm not sure if we're thinking about the same accident; but, if we are, it happened at a Naval reactor design facility in Idaho. According to one story, I can not vouch for accuracy or truth, claimed that a steam explosion drove fuel rods out of the top of an experimental reactor and pinned the corpse of at least one technician/operator to the ceiling of the reactor room.
Depending on if it is open the B reactor tour was amazing. People from all over the world were on it. It is amazing learning how many people who live here in the tri cities have never been on it.
I live near there, The Tri-Cities and especially Richland is proud of its atomic heritage. There are also limited tours that people can get of the Handford cleanup. You can also get a Tour of the B reactor, it's a pretty sweet tour and a lot of fun. You can also get tour of Pre-Hanford which gives tours of White Bluffs and old Hanford.
Hanford does still have an active Nuclear reactor on it, it is for power generation though. There are also now plans to build two new next-gen Nuclear plants on the site as well.
Nothing is as smooth as Simon's transition to sponsor's plug - only his head, thanks to Dollar Shave Club!
I've spent 30 years of summers playing in the waters of the Columbia River downstream of Hanford. Fingers crossed
Harold McClusky, living the Fallout ghoul life
I was just thinking how Bethesda needs to make a Fallout in Washington. It should be kinda like N.V.
Drank Nukeacola every day!
If ever there was an example of that rad immunity some of the Children of the Atom claim to have it would be that guy.
Oak Ridge was still used to enrich the Uranium to a higher concentration of U235, while the Hanford site was used to produce the Plutonium. Uranium enrichment does not require nuclear reactions, so it was relatively safe to continue the process at Oak Ridge before sending material to Hanford to be converted.
FINALLY I’VE ASKED FOR THIS FOREVER THANK YOU SIMON! I’ve lived by this my entire life and I needed that Simon spin
Live next to Hanford 2. My mom got cancer from that place
The video is pretty accurate. I didn't hear anything about purex, PFP, K-basin and FFTF or the underground railway they have out at Hanford. They also have tunnels with the ambulances that took the atomic man to the hospital. Those tunnels are locked and barricaded off underground. I've worked out there for many years. The post office still stands as well at Hanford. Overall 👍🏼👍🏼 keep up the great videos!
I actually go by Hanford all the time... it pretty much put the Tri Cities area on the map
I woulda thought the credit for that would be given to Walla Walla.
People outside Washington only know the name Walla Walla.
@@masterrafferty4065 k. I'm in Bremerton, i know all the names. But until like 20 years ago the Hanford site was still classified. I'm pretty sure Clinton declassified it when it was named a Superfund site.
I meant it quite literally. A large portion of the population form the tri cities came to that area for employment at Hanford back in the day or to support families that worked there. The population boomed during that period.
@@jumby1984 Oh! Yeah, that's almost a guarantee.
Shout out to the Hobart mixer at 07:46!! Those things are total workhorses in every industry
"Re-settle" a deadly euphemism
Technically it is not a desert, but a dry platue. Second, there has been and still remains active neuclear reactors at Hanford, including 3 that are in mothball and remain being maintained in case they are needed. While the cleanup of the nuclear waste from WW2 and continued production of nuclear power is massive and on going, including the warming of the columbia river from the water being returned to the river from the cooling towers there is a lot of science still being performed at hanford which employes thousands and not all being cleanup crews.
Yes, Hanford is bad. But what scares me more is this, what about Soviet production facilities?
They've done videos on at least two soviet sites, one nuclear and one biological. It would seem the Soviets have even less concern for their citizens than the USA government.
@@michaelb1761 We may never know.
@@michaelb1761 What, you're saying using lake water to directly cool your nuclear reactor is a bad idea?? Psshhhh. Also the radioactive waste?? Straight to the lake, it's fiinneeee.
Look up the Kyshtym disaster.
This is literally Whataboutism. Anyway... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster
Thank you Simon I appreciate the fact that you make all these videos and that you have multiple channels so I can always have something interesting that I want to watch even if I'm not interested in some of the content there's always something in the slew of videos that you release every day that I'm wanting to watch I hope this doesn't sound creepy but sometimes when I'm watching your videos at night because you have such a soothing voice I fall asleep to your videos so thank you Simon for the good night's rest
Live about an hour to the South East of the Hanford Site and have worked all over out there.
It's interesting to say the least.
I worked there when LAW and HLW facilities were holes in the ground. I loved the weather, perfect for motorcycle rides.
My friends grandmother use to tell us stories about what it was like to grow up at the site, her father was a nuclear engineer at the time.
I grew up in Washington State, and graduated from high school in 80’s. Every year we had a football tournament in Tacoma where I’m from. Sometimes we’d get teams in from Eastern Washington, in this case we ran into kids from Hanford (they built a new high school in the 1940’s). They had cool letterman jackets, they said, “Hanford Bombers”. The graphic on the jacket was a B-17 surrounded by electrons with a mushroom cloud in the background.
As a child of a World War II combat veteran I met a LOT of WW II combat and non-combat veterans. Never once did I hear one regret building those bombs or using those bombs on Japan! “Good” and “bad” are about perspective. The live lobsters in a lobster tank on the Titanic would look upon that fateful evening as a miracle!
The large majority of USA generals at the time did regret dropping the bomb, it wasn’t necessary in most of their views.
Simon mentions the occupants of Hanford and White Bluffs being moved; but did you know that the *cemetery* was moved, too? The caskets and bodies were exhumed and moved to a new cemetery in nearby Prosser, WA.
Given this episode I can’t imagine what some of the nuclear development sites in Russia or Communist China look like.
This video makes Hanford sound much worse then it actually is. As someone who grew up in Washington, Hanford is not some major ecological disaster that everyone is worried about. They are storing a lot of nuclear waste there and there has been a cleanup plan in progress to remove it and store it in a more secure specialized facility for thirty years that has been blocked by political bureaucracy. The issue is not so much a nuclear wasteland that is unusable, as it is a site that has been forced to store nuclear waste long term instead of temporarily. Beyond that, the site is currently used for other purposes such as the LIGO experiment. In some ways the site is a testing ground on how to deal with nuclear waste and it's cleanup, unlike other countries like Russia where the focus is abandonment and ignoring the impact, instead of focusing on how to learn about possible long term effects and adapt processes.
You don't have to imagine. The purpose of Chernobyl (other than generating power obviously) was to manufacture weapons grade nuclear material. And we can see how that turned out. China I don't know.
@@ADAMJWAITE There are still leaking tanks and that's bad. But you're right, it's not like it's crazy dangerous or anything. Just not ideal and something that needs to be dealt with.
@Bob Fleming Oh wow, you mean to say plutonium isotopes are dangerous? I had no idea at all. Thank you for your big brain thoughts. The placement and concentrations of the radioactive substances at Hanford are not crazy dangerous. I swim downstream from it all the time. Millions of people live downstream and tens of thousands live around the place. People eat fish from the Columbia all over the world. Hanford is not crazy dangerous as things stand, like I said. But thanks for the pointless comment my guy.
@Bob Fleming it's fine, as long as you live upriver. The native Americans don't eaten sturgeon from below Hanford for a good reason.
I actually recognize the men in some of these photos. 1:18 is Dr Norris Bradbury, standing next to The Gadget. He was later to be director at Los Alamos for several decades. He oversaw the assembly of The Gadget.
I mention the Hanford site in the comments section of other videos . I don't know if you did this because of my suggestion but Thanks .
It should be pointed out that the majority of the solid waste at Hanford is what would be termed low-level. It was generated in the same manner as the low-level radioactive waste generated by your local hospital, just not nearly as potentially dangerous.
What happened is that facilities working with radioactive materials had a point past which you had to wear coveralls, gloves, etc. Anything which went past this point was considered "waste", whether contaminated or not. When you left the exclusion area your protective clothing went into a barrel for disposal as "waste", even if it had no detectable contamination. Ditto for wastebasket contents, paper towels from the bathroom, etc.
Further, most contamination which IS present are Alpha Emitters. Need to shield yourself from Alpha Radiation? A sheet of paper from your printer will block Alpha particles just fine, as will your skin. In general terms, a banana will have more Alpha activity due to the potassium content than a barrel of low-level waste has.
This crap is scary enough without names like "Bone Seeker," yet the name STILL doesn't fully convey the danger present.
The hydroelectric power plant at Grand Coulee dam, also in Eastern Washington state is the largest power plant in the U.S. at 6.81 Gigawatts capacity.
The largest nuclear power plant is Palo Verde with a capacity of 3.9 Gigawatts.
The project needed a place to house workers, so the government repossessed the nearby village of Richland using Eminent Domain, and built a city. Richland went from only about 200 people to over 40,000. The government owned all the land, and built all the houses. The houses were built in tracts and neighborhoods with only a limited number of plans. In typical official style, these plans were labeled A, B, C, and so on. These original houses are still there, and are locally known as 'alphabet houses'. It wasn't until decades later that the DoE relented and people were allowed to purchase land in Richland.
Between my studies of The Manhattan Project and America's early nuclear program, as well as having spent much of my summers growing up in the shadow of the Hanford Site, this video was fascinating and right up my alley.
I have lived for 56 years with the Hanford reactor in my back yard. What my parents told me and what I told my kids might shock you. If the reactor goes don’t worry about hiding under your desk. Go outside and watch the show. It’s better to die instantly than it is to die from radiation poisoning. I’ve never been afraid of it. In fact we joke that we glow in the dark. I own one of the military alphabet houses. Our history is interesting. How smaller towns merged to become the greater Tri-Cities area.
There has necer been a nuclear explosion at any reactor. Only hydrogen (or other causes) explosions. So shut your windows and wait to be evacuated.
The snag is that nuke reactors don’t explode like nuke bombs. Reactors scatter poison whereas bombs flash and blast the locals AND poison everything downwind.
Born in 2002 and lived in alphabet homes my house life until I got an apartment at 20. But I've always been shocked at how well they have held up for being built as cheap as possible
I assume there is a Soviet version of Hanford. Would be interested in that Megaproject too.
One thing to note, the cost to clean Hanford up pales in comparison to the perceived economic benefit it provided. All of those nuclear weapons guaranteed a form of peace, which allowed our economy to develop and grow. Our economy has generated hundreds of trillions of dollars since the end of WW2. So spending a few hundred billion to clean up the mess is worth it. Maybe. Nonetheless, it's expected that you clean up any messes you make.
Osersk
@@harpospondlife4910 ...yes....Osersk......or Ozyorsk.....or Mayak....or Chelyabinsk....whichever you want to call it. That was USSR's equivalent to Hanford....but the final result (so far) is much worse. It is still the #2 worst radiological event/location/disaster in the world behind Chernobyl.
I live in Kentucky. Paducah, KY holds an enormous amount of nuclear waste of all types. Paducah is on the banks of the Mississippi river which has experienced huge floods and actually shifting positions at times. Scary
i’m sad you didn’t talk about the Green Run or the tests they did on animals and incarcerated people there!!! definitely an important part of Hanford history
also sad you didn’t mention the horrible workers rights violations over the years. Hanford (and all DOE sites) are not overseen by OSHA so the nonprofit organization The Hanford Challenge is the only organization that’s even trying to regulate the way workers are treated and protected at Hanford
He never really does. His videos aren't terrible but their very narrative approved.
I grew up next to Hanford and my dad has worked out there on the clean up for the last 20 years.
The site was also chosen because of the recently completed Grand Coukee Dam .
Coulee
Several factors were involved: out of range of Japanese carrier based aircraft, lots of water for reactor cooling, isolated for security, near major railroad lines, good supply of gravel for concrete, plus others I'm forgetting.
Nice vid! I work there rn its pretty awesome learning about it
I think you should have said "nucleide" instead of nucleotides, which are a component of DNA!
The word is N-U-C-L-I-D-E
7:45 Plutonium was "whisked" away...lol good one!