FAQs

The Hanford Nuclear Site is located in southeastern Washington State, in the town of Hanford located in Benton County. The site was originally established in 1943 to produce plutonium for the first nuclear bomb, which was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. Production slowed after the end of World War II, but increased again in 1947 to answer the demands of the Cold War. Nuclear technology developed rapidly during the following years. The Hanford site, which eventually boasted a 51,000 person workforce, worked to develop nine nuclear reactors and five plutonium processing complexes over a 586-mile parcel of land.

Originally home to several tribes of Native Americans, the land that hosts the Hanford Site filled with pioneers and settlers around the mid-1800s. Towns such as Hanford and nearby White Bluffs were formed to support surrounding farms and ranches, and the thriving small towns served many residents. In 1943, the government made a decision to relocate portions of the Manhattan Project to the Hanford Site, and residents of Hanford and White Bluffs were forced to abandon their homes and make a life elsewhere, receiving just a small stipend from the government as compensation to leave the homes and farms they had worked so hard to develop.

Only a minute number of workers at the Hanford Site knew what they were building or what the impact on the surrounding people and land would produce. Workers were told only that they were doing important war work; work that would benefit the security of America and its people. The majority of the employees at the Hanford Site had no idea that the work they were doing released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air, land and into the Columbia River, due to what would later be defined as "inadequate waste disposal processes".

The Hanford Site would remain in operation until 1987, when the last nuclear reactor ceased operation. Decades of nuclear and plutonium production left solid and liquid wastes that posed imminent risk to the area and led to serious contamination of the Columbia River. In 1989, the Washington State Department of Ecology, along with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, entered into what is now called the TPA, or Tri-Party Agreement, an agreement made that would be committed to the cleanup of the Hanford Site and surrounding affected areas, including the Columbia River.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is under the authority of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and is located in Washington State. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory began official operations in 1965 and is still in operation today. PNNL's first mission was the research and development involved in relation to the manufacturing of nuclear energy. Early researchers at the PNNL were responsible for developing the standards and devices used for setting and measuring radiation doses received by nuclear workers. PNNL researchers continue to work today in the development of processes used to effectively cleanup hazardous waste and radioactive materials.

PNNL operated on property at the Hanford Site until the end of 2004, but eventually opened a separate facility in Richland, Washington. For purposes of the EEOICPA, PNNL is considered part of the Hanford Site for all employees who worked for PNNL through the end of 2004. Because of the long-running history and continued work at PNNL, EEOICPA claimants are eligible to file both Part B and Part E claims for compensation.

Since 1956, the plant now owned by ATI Wah Chang (formerly called the Wah Chang Corporation) has operated as a rare metals extraction facility, after the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) contracted with Wah Chang Corporation in 1956 to run the U.S. Bureau of Mines zirconium plant in Albany, Oregon. The Wah Chang Corporation produced not only zirconium, but hafnium, tantalum and niobium at the site as well. The production processes for these radioactive metals generated radioactive waste, which was subsequently leaked into the surrounding environment.

Wah Chang was deemed a Superfund site in 1983, when the Superfund (or CERCLA, which stands for Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act) deemed that the company's processes had contaminated nearby rivers.

From 1983 to 2002, ATI Wah Chang conducted clean-up me

The Albany Research Center, also known as the Northwest Electro-development Laboratory and the Albany Metallurgy Research Center was opened in 1943 in Albany, Oregon. The original use of the center was to find methods for using the abundant low-grade resources of the area and to develop new metallurgical processes using the wealth of electrical energy in the area.

Among the research projects at the Albany Research Center was the partnership with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in the development of the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus. The Albany Research Center, in partnership with the AEC and other agencies, conducted experiments with radioactive materials from 1945 until 1978.

A radiological survey of the site was conducted in 1985, and findings concluded that portions of several buildings and exterior locations were determined as being in need of decontamination. Cleanup was conducted from 1987 to 1988, and again from 1990 to 1991. All hazardous waste material was sent to The Hanford Site for disposal. Although the Albany Research Center is still active, it no longer conducts experiments using radioactive material.

The Uranium Mill and Disposal Cell processing site is a former uranium-ore processing facility located in the town of Lakeview, Oregon, which is located approximately 16 miles north of the California-Oregon border. Uranium is used primarily for the development of nuclear power, and the uranium milling process used at the Lakeview site left radioactive tailings, which eventually contaminated nearby groundwater. No uranium ore was processed at the site after 1961.

Although the radiation hazards associated with uranium milling were largely unknown in the early years of uranium mining, subsequent studies of uranium miners led to the discovery that workers were indeed being exposed to high levels of radiation. The studies showed that intense inhalation of radon gas that uranium miners were subjected to could cause sharp increases of lung and other cancers in uranium miners. Shallow groundwater at the site area has been tested and has shown to have elevated concentrations of arsenic, boron, chloride, manganese, sodium, and sulfate. Although these concentrations have been shown to have originated from several sources, the Lakeview uranium site was deemed one culprit, and the Department of Energy (DOE) established controls to ensure protection of human health, including cleanup of the uranium tailings and continued monitoring of the groundwater at the site.

Operations at the Lakeview, Oregon site ceased in 1961, and from 1986 to 1988, the uranium tailing contaminants were removed from the site and placed in an engineered disposal cell, which is stored 7 miles northwest of Lakeview.

Amchitka is the largest and southernmost island of the Rat Islands group in the Aleutian Chain, located about 1,340 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. Amchitka boasts roughly 74,240 acres, with a hilly landscape containing elevations that range from sea level to over 1,100 feet above sea level.

The U.S. military chose Amchitka Island to begin launching an assault on Japanese-owned Kiska Island, which is roughly 60 miles west of Amchitka, in 1943. Occupancy of Amchitka peaked at 15,000 troops, but military operations on the island ceased in 1945. The U.S. military abandoned the site in 1950, however the U.S. government's Atomic Energy Commission chose the site for testing of underground nuclear detonations. The government performed three tests at the Amchitka site, the first being performed in October 1965.

The first test, named Long Shot, was a nuclear detection research experiment in which the bomb was detonated at 2,300 feet below ground level. The second test, called Milrow, was detonated in October 1969 at a depth of 4,000 feet. The third test, called Cannikin, was performed in November of 1971 at a depth of 5,875 below ground surface. Environmental groups and citizens alike protested the experiments, fearing that the tests - namely the Cannikin test - would trigger earthquakes and tsunamis in nearby areas.

While fears of tsunamis and earthquakes went unrealized, fears of disease-producing contaminants did not. Because the concentrations of tritium detections in surface water were considered safe at 16,000 picocuries per liter (the U.S. EPA standard of safety is 20,000 picocuries per liter), and the monitoring of groundwater and surface water from 1965 to 2001 showed only decreasing levels of tritium, monitoring of the site ceased in 2001. However, employees working at Amchitka during the Atomic Energy Commission's testing years were exposed to tritium and other possible contaminants.

Therefore, employees who worked at Amchitka Island during the years of the testing of underground nuclear detonations are deemed eligible for EEOICPA care benefits under Part B of the EEOICPA (Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act).

Chariot, Alaska, harbor excavation plans, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy

The Chariot, Alaska site (known as "Project Chariot") was part of the Plowshare Program created in 1957 by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). A main purpose of the Plowshare Program, which was located in Chariot in the Cape Thompson area of the state, was to research the potential of using nuclear explosives to excavate a harbor. Project Chariot began in 1958, and conducted more than 40 pretest studies of the Cape Thompson area between 1959 and 1962. No nuclear detonations were ever conducted at Chariot for the purposes or excavation research, however a subsequent test did bring radioactive contaminants to the area.

Materials from a 1962 nuclear explosion at the Nevada Test Site were transported in 1962 to the Chariot Site. These materials were used in several experiments and then buried. The materials remained buried until 1993, at which time a University of Alaska researcher, through the discovery of correspondence between the AEC and the U.S. Geological Survey, brought the news of the buried contaminants to media attention. Residents of nearby areas demanded removal of the radioactive contaminants, and the government removed them promptly.