Hanford Engineer Works

Stanley G. Thompson joined my group on October 1, 1942 and it fell to his lot to discover the process that was chosen for use at Clinton Laboratories (in Tennessee) and the Hanford Engineer Works (in the state of Washington) for the separation of plutonium from uranium and the immense intensity of radioactive fission products with which it was produced in the nuclear chain reactors. Again I turn to my journal to tell the story ... 

Hanford and Richland, Washington, was selected for industrial-scale plutonium production and chemical separations facilities on January 16, 1943. This site was named the Hanford Engineer Works (later named the Hanford Site). 

Cantril, S.T. and Parker, H.M., Status of health and protection at the Hanford Engineer Works, in Industrial Medicine on the Plutonium Project, Stone, R.S., Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1951. 

E.l. DuPont de Nemours, Inc., at the Hanford Engineering Works from 1944 to 1946 as part of the Manhattan Project. 

XX-4] PADILLA, Jr., A., Mechanical work energy for sodium-fuel thermal interaction, HEDL-TME-71-94, Hanford Engineering Development Laboratory (1971). 

The Manhattan Project marked scientists and engineers who participated in it for the remainder of their working lives. The designers and operators of the Hanford plant confronted threats to air and water of an unprecedented nature and scale. The job of containing those threats fell to DuPont s environmental specialists. Like others in the bomb project, they would not be the same when they emerged from the experience. 

Our initial work in automating laboratory analysis of radionuclides in nuclear waste has now advanced to the development of sensors and instruments for nonlaboratory settings. Our sensor for Tc in groundwater was selected for prototype engineering development, and a field test was conducted at the Hanford site in September 2002. This unit successfully quantified the Tc activity in Hanford groundwater samples. The automated Tc analyzer has been under development for use at the Hanford site, and was selected in a conqietitive process for incorporation into the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. 

The scope of work for purposes of this Closure Report is assumed to be the dismantling of all 100-N facilities and burial at another Hanford site. This assumption is based on the Hanford Site EIS Decoimissloning of Eight Surplus Production Reactors at the Hanford Site (DOE/EIS 1993). The actual means of decommissioning the reactor and other facilities at the 100-N site will depend on future engineering studies and the NEPA process, which will evaluate alternative actions and will be followed by a ROD. 

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