Hanford cleanup and archaeology

[csziggy]

DOE to begin work on historic landfills
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
Published: 09/01/09 1:42 am | Updated: 09/01/09 1:42 am


The Department of Energy plans to start work today to excavate the historic landfills that hold day-to-day trash generated by more than 50,000 Hanford workers and their families during World War II. Unlike most other environmental cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation, this trash will be checked for historical significance as it is unearthed. "Information collected from the waste sites will be used to construct a social history of Hanford workers," said Tom Marceau, cultural resources supervisor for Washington Closure Hanford, a DOE cleanup contractor.

The two landfills hold household trash from what once was the world's largest trailer park and a sprawling camp of hutments, barracks and cafeterias to feed and house workers racing to produce plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping end the war. The area where the WWII trash was buried and burned on the closed nuclear reservation remains littered with bottles, crockery and other debris. It's all just a teaser of what lies beneath the soil. In some places, it's difficult to take a step without the crunch of breaking glass underfoot.

Four years ago, the plan was to dig up the first of the landfills as part of cleanup along the Columbia River and deposit the contents in the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, a lined modern landfill in central Hanford. But that was before archaeologists nationwide started weighing in, succeeding in getting the first landfill ruled eligible for listing on the National Register for Historic Places.

"It is rare to discover such a large and varied assemblage of archaeological materials," wrote Douglas Scott, then president of the Society for Historical Archaeology in 2006. "Artifact studies that may be performed may become a significant contribution to 20th century archaeology in the United States."

More: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/northwest/story/863372.html[/div

[FarCenter]

1. Archeologists digging through the plastic tampon applicator strata of the feminine hygiene era

[Tikki]

2. Most of those trailers were....

manned by men; the workers who poured in...The families came later and lived in gov housing
up until '58 when the EO sold the houses to the workers.
So they're apt to find lots of rusty razor blades and shards of coffee cups.

Ironically, after they closed out the trailers in No. Richland nee Hanford there were no
trailer parks in city proper at least through the '70's.

If I were an archaeologist digging around in that contaminated dirt, I'd be wearing
some heavy duty hazardous gear....Talk about your Valley Fever.



Tikki...a child of the radiant glow..

[Javaman]

4. That's exactly why I think this is a smoke screen.

The containment methods back then were a bit, shall we say, suspect.

I'm not saying that those "trash" pits are glowing, but frankly, this story smells.

There is more to this.

[Tikki]

5. I am sure some of these type actions are geared to....

rehabilitate Hanford's image.
Back when, when Ronnie Raygun was a spokesman for GE and frequent talker in the Hanford area...
there was a kind of naivety that working in the nuclear industry was patriotic.
I am sure this served the Corporate Masters well, (GE, Battelle & etc.) who took over production and later
maintenance and cleanup.

When working and living within this site became a sacrifice for many..well, things began to slowly change.

If they can get bus loads of tourists and relic hunters into the curiosity tour loop..I am sure Hastings (R-WA)
and those he serves hopes it will bring some relief from the negative that hangs over and lurks in the soil at the Hanford site.

Tikki ....a child of the radiant glow.

[Javaman]

6. Oh wait, now I remember. When I first wrote my responce I had a nagging feeling

about something. Reading your reply triggered something...

I knew this story was total smoke screen bullshit.

get a load of this:

Found in the Trash: A Jug of Plutonium (Vintage ’44, Sleuths Say)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/science/03plut.html

An old safe buried in a waste trench at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State has yielded an artifact from the birth of the atomic age: a batch of plutonium that is among the first ever made.

Washington Closure Hanford
BURIED Plutonium found in 2004 was among the first ever made.

The plutonium, found in a one-gallon glass jug after a cleanup crew tore open the safe with an excavator, was processed at Hanford in late 1944 from spent uranium fuel from a reactor at Oak Ridge, Tenn. It was the product of test runs of a plant built for separating plutonium for use in the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.

Apart from the historical significance of the discovery — the only earlier sample of man-made plutonium known to exist was produced in 1941 in an accelerator and is stored at the Smithsonian Institution — the techniques employed to determine its origins provide a glimpse of the kind of detective work that might be used against atomic terrorism.

“This is a completely unclassified example of the type of science you could apply in nuclear forensics,” said Jon M. Schwantes, who led a team that analyzed the plutonium at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Their findings were published in Analytical Chemistry.


(sometimes my lizard brain still works. LOL)

[Tikki]

7. That is certainly what it is about....

Yes, I remember that find, also.

Even today this Hanford site is in the frickin' middle of nowhere. But there are
human beings tied to the land around there.

NUKE may feed some families, but ag and light industry does, also.

Some are hoping they can get you there so they can tell you all's OK. It is not.


Tikki

[hunter]

3. Yet another graduate program requiring a film badge and geiger counter...

I wonder what they are looking for. Did someone lose something important in the trash?