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Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. The storage and disposal of radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment.
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It has also been known as Site W and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the Hanford Engineer Works and B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb, which was tested in the Trinity nuclear test, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki.
The Tri-Cities are three closely linked cities at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. The cities border one another, making the Tri-Cities seem like one uninterrupted mid-sized city. The three cities function as the center of the Tri-Cities metropolitan area, which consists of Benton and Franklin counties. The Tri-Cities urban area consists of the city of West Richland, the census-designated places (CDP) of West Pasco, Washington and Finley, as well as the CDP of Burbank, despite the latter being located in Walla Walla County.
Richland is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima and the Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 60,560. Along with the nearby cities of Pasco and Kennewick, Richland is one of the Tri-Cities, and is home to the Hanford nuclear site.
Kennewick is a city in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is located along the southwest bank of the Columbia River, just southeast of the confluence of the Columbia and Yakima rivers and across from the confluence of the Columbia and Snake rivers. It is the most populous of the three cities collectively referred to as the Tri-Cities. The United States Census Bureau estimated the population to be 84,750 as of 2022, up from 83,921 at the 2020 United States Census.
A non-renewable resource is a natural resource that cannot be readily replaced by natural means at a pace quick enough to keep up with consumption. An example is carbon-based fossil fuels. The original organic matter, with the aid of heat and pressure, becomes a fuel such as oil or gas. Earth minerals and metal ores, fossil fuels and groundwater in certain aquifers are all considered non-renewable resources, though individual elements are always conserved.
Columbia Generating Station is a nuclear commercial energy facility located on the Hanford Site, 10 miles (16 km) north of Richland, Washington. It is owned and operated by Energy Northwest, a Washington state, not-for-profit joint operating agency. Licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1983, Columbia first produced electricity in May 1984, and entered commercial operation in December 1984.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is a United States federal law which established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes.
State Route 240 (SR 240) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Washington. It travels diagonally from northwest to southwest within Benton County, serving the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Tri-Cities region. The highway begins at a junction with SR 24 and travels around Richland on a limited-access bypass. From there, it briefly overlaps Interstate 182 (I-182) and continues southeast as a freeway along the Columbia River into Kennewick, terminating at an interchange with U.S. Route 395 (US 395). SR 240 is one of the busiest highways in the Tri-Cities region, with a daily average of 76,000 vehicles on a section crossing the Yakima River Delta.
Uranium mining in the United States produced 173,875 pounds (78.9 tonnes) of U3O8 in 2019, 88% lower than the 2018 production of 1,447,945 pounds (656.8 tonnes) of U3O8 and the lowest US annual production since 1948. The 2019 production represents 0.3% of the anticipated uranium fuel requirements of the US's nuclear power reactors for the year.
High-level radioactive waste management concerns how radioactive materials created during production of nuclear power and nuclear weapons are dealt with. Radioactive waste contains a mixture of short-lived and long-lived nuclides, as well as non-radioactive nuclides. There was reportedly some 47,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste stored in the United States in 2002.
The Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP), also known as 'Z Plant', was part of the Hanford Site nuclear research complex in Washington, US.
The Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site was a nuclear fuel production facility located by the Cimarron River near Cimarron City, Oklahoma. It was operated by Kerr-McGee Corporation (KMC) from 1965 to 1975.
Allison M. Macfarlane directs the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. She is the former director of the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University, where she was Professor of Science Policy and International Affairs. She was the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from July 9, 2012, to December 31, 2014.
William Howard Arnold is an American nuclear physicist, with primary areas of expertise in nuclear power, nuclear fuel, and nuclear waste disposal. He was president and manager of the first privately owned uranium-enrichment facility in the United States, Louisiana Energy Services. He was responsible for reactor physics design of the first series of Westinghouse Corporation commercial nuclear reactors, and served as president of the Nuclear International Division of Westinghouse Corporation. He designed nuclear reactor cores for civilian power reactors, for space power and propulsion, and for production of nuclear materials. He managed multidisciplinary groups of engineers and scientists working in reactor core design, and led work that promoted the use of centrifuge technology in uranium enrichment.
Sharon Mosher is an American geologist. She did her undergraduate work at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After earning an MSc from Brown University, she returned to the University of Illinois to get her PhD in Geology in 1978. Since 2001 she has held the William Stamps Farish Chair at University of Texas, and, since 2009 she has served as the dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences at Texas. In 2013 she became the president of the American Geosciences Institute.
The Ringold Formation is a geologic formation in Eastern Washington, United States. The formation consists of sediment laid down by the Columbia River following the flood basalt eruptions of the Columbia River Basalt Group, and reaches up to 1,000 feet (300 m) thick in places. It preserves fossils dating back to the Neogene period.
Lynn Walter Gelhar is an American civil engineer focusing in hydrology and is currently Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is recognized for pioneering research in stochastic subsurface hydrology, has leading research in the area of field-scale contaminant transport experiments, and has extensive experience on the hydrologic aspects of nuclear waste disposal.
The following is a timeline of the history of the Tri-Cities, an area of the U.S. state of Washington encompassing the cities of Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland.
References
- 1 2 "Daughters of Hanford: A Black Woman Geologist Digs Into Hanford Soil". Northwest Public Broadcasting. August 1, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
- 1 2 3 4 "Women in Conservation". The Nature Conservancy. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "The National Academies Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, 2020 Membership Biographies" (PDF).
- 1 2 Hunter, Dana. "Black History Month: Making History in the Geosciences". Scientific American Blog Network. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
- ↑ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering (October 21, 2019). "Board On Earth Sciences And Resources". Assuring Data Quality at U.S. Geological Survey Laboratories. National Academies Press (US). ISBN 978-0-309-49562-2.
- ↑ "Locke appoints to African American Affairs Commission and various state boards and commissions". State of Washington Digital Archives, Governor Gary Locke. January 29, 1999. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
- ↑ "Kennewick's new Diversity Commission tackles complex issue". Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. August 11, 2017. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
- ↑ "Sponsor Information | National Association for Black Geoscientists". GrantForward. Retrieved June 16, 2020.