SPOKANE — A deal to address two nuclear waste storage tanks that are leaking radioactive materials into the soil in Washington state was reached Thursday between the state and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The waste is left over from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington.
From World War II through the Cold War, Hanford produced more than 70 tons of plutonium, including for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of World War II. When plutonium production ceased in 1989, the site’s mission shifted to cleaning up the chemical and radioactive waste left behind, including 56 million gallons of waste stored in 177 giant underground tanks.
The Department of Energy announced in April 2021 that Tank B-109 was leaking waste into the surrounding soil. Tank T-111 was discovered to be leaking in 2013.