The 56 million gallons of radioactive waste created from decades of plutonium enrichment at Hanford are stored in 177 massive, underground tanks on 18 different ‘farms’ spread out over the 580 square miles of the nuclear reservation in Washington State. Most of the tanks are single-shelled, but 28 of them are double-shelled, which helps prevent waste from getting into the ground. Each tank holds between 55,000 and a million gallons of toxic waste. 

The U.S. Department of Energy oversees the facility and is responsible for preventing the contamination of both the groundwater and the Columbia River. The DOE is also in the process of testing its multi-billion dollar vitrification plant, which is intended to bind-up the radioactive waste in glass logs to safely store it. We get a tour of the tank farm from Karthik Subramanian, who serves as Chief Operating Officer of Washington River Protection Solutions, the tank farm operations contractor. And we sit down with Brian Vance, the Department of Energy’s top manager in charge of Hanford to hear more about tank integrity, the status of the vitrification plant and the overall clean up progress.