Located in the middle of the desert in Eastern Washington, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was once the main producer of plutonium, the key ingredient for nuclear weapons. It is now the world's largest toxic waste site outside the former Soviet Union. Taxpayers spend an annual $1.5 billion to try to clean up 60 years of leaking tanks and radioactive landfills. Amazingly, this December, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Bill Richardson may announce plans to reopen Hanford. Critics fear that a decision to reopen, with the help of the mini-nuke legislation, will bring Hanford back to its Cold War roots--the bomb-making business.
Interestingly, supporters of Hanford say reopening isn't about mini nukes, but medicine. The Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) reactor at Hanford is the only reactor in the country capable of producing large quantities of short-lived radioactive elements called isotopes. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Slade Gorton (R-WA) claim the isotopes have unlimited medical potential in cancer research for example, and that jobs could be created for the residents near Hanford. "Medical isotopes must be part of any mission to restart [Hanford]," says Murray. The trick is, the same process to create medical isotopes can be used to create mini nukes, which critics fear is the window of opportunity the military needs to draw Hanford back into nuclear weapons production.
Indeed, while the DOE says Hanford's reopening would be for civilian projects like medical isotopes, Richardson has stated he cannot rule out military uses for Hanford in the future, especially on the eve of an election that will bring a new DOE director. To further fan the flames of speculation, the DOE's environmental impact study, commissioned last year to look at the feasibility of reopening Hanford, has the ambiguously defined "nuclear research" as one of its missions.
Anti-nuclear activists, like Tom Carpenter of the Government Accountability Project, question the call for medical isotopes and fear that the ambiguity of the DOE's mission statement offers an open door at Hanford to the military and projects like the mini nuke. "The call for medical isotopes is merely a P.R. campaign to sell Hanford back to the public. They'll never get the plant open by calling it a weapons plant," says Carpenter.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) also questions the medical isotope claim. In a letter to the DOE, Wyden and six other congressmen wrote, "The claimed plutonium and isotope needs, for which our region would be subjected to the risks of FFTF nuclear restart, are now revealed to be illusory claims by the proponents of this dangerous project." If the mini nukes go into production--a possibility if Bush is elected--the Hanford reactor could be back to business as usual, creating not only medical isotopes, but new nuclear weapons.
