The Columbia River runs through the Hanford Nuclear Site, home to some of the most dangerous pollution on Earth. What will remain of the Hanford Nuclear Site’s radioactive and toxic pollution in 100 years? Are Columbia River fish too toxic to eat? Can tribal people exercise their rights to hunt and fish at Hanford? The answers to these questions hinge on decisions our government makes today about Hanford cleanup. And right now the federal government is proposing to reclassify high-level nuclear waste as low-level and leave it in Hanford’s underground tanks, soils, and groundwater.
On this episode we talk again with Dan Serres with Columbia Riverkeeper, and Tom Carpenter with Hanford Challenge, about the fallacy of this latest government proposal to address the critical problems at Hanford. We'll talk about Hanford's toxic legacy that has defied adequate clean up for over 70 years and why renaming radioactive waste is not clean up.
Dan Serres is Columbia Riverkeeper's Conservation Director. He works to engage diverse communities along the Columbia. In 2005, he started with Columbia Riverkeeper as the lead organizer in their successful campaign to protect the Columbia River Estuary, forests, and farmland from the Bradwood Landing and Oregon LNG Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) proposals and their related pipelines. Since 2009, he has filled the role of Conservation Director where his work has broadened to protecting the Columbia River from a barrage of dirty fossil fuel export proposals including LNG export terminals, coal export terminals, oil-by-rail facilities, and power plants. Dan is also a member of the Hanford Advisory Board, where he speaks up as a public voice demanding faster and more robust cleanup of North America’s most contaminated nuclear site.
Tom Carpenter is the Executive Director of the Hanford Challenge. He brings decades of experience in organizing, litigating, and policy oversight in the nuclear field, much of it devoted to Hanford. He is an attorney, a graduate of Antioch School of Law, and has a Masters in Organizational Design and Renewal from Seattle University. Through his work at GAP and Hanford Challenge, Tom has visited dozens of nuclear sites in the U.S. and Russia, hosted international conferences on protecting nuclear whistleblowers and examining the legacy of highly-contaminated nuclear facilities, and focusing on the Hanford Nuclear Site in southeastern Washington State. Tom helped establish and is a Board member of the Hanford Concerns Council (and its predecessor, the Hanford Joint Council) to mediate and resolve difficult and complicated issues relating to Hanford. He has authored numerous reports and articles on the effects of nuclear production on workforce health and safety and the environment, and established and participated in independent environmental sampling programs at Hanford, Los Alamos, and Russian nuclear sites.
- KBOO