[CPEO-MEF] Hanford Reservation (WA) nuclear tourism

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

In Hanford, Wash., the country's most polluted nuclear reactor site 
draws tourists
The scenic Columbia River and its wildlife attract visitors while a 
$2-billion-a-year cleanup of the area continues.

By Hugo Martin
Los Angeles Times
August 12, 2008

HANFORD, WASH. - A platoon of double-crested cormorants took flight from 
the eastern shore of the Columbia River, skimming the sun-sparkled 
surface as two slender white egrets stood in the nearby shallows, 
hunting small fish hiding in the reeds.

Twenty kayakers, mostly tourists from the Pacific Northwest, paddled 
along, letting the steady current do most of the work. They coasted past 
mule deer grazing on the shore, coyotes stalking the sandy beaches and 
cliff swallows buzzing the nearby white bluffs.

But the main attraction was on the western shore: several bland, 
industrial-gray structures and towering smoke stacks, a collection of 
buildings that gave birth to America's atomic age.

Welcome to the Hanford Reach, where one of the last free-flowing 
stretches of the Columbia River encounters America's most contaminated 
nuclear site. Along this flat, mostly treeless scrubland, the U.S. 
government built nine reactors between 1943 and 1963, including the 
historic "B" plant that produced the world's first weapons-grade 
plutonium for the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-trw-hanford13-2008aug13,0,77210.story

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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