Photo Credit: Ben Herndon
Riverkeeper’s Advocacy Director centers the Columbia River in Hanford conversations
By Simone Anter, Senior Attorney & Hanford Program Director
Have you seen the Hanford Nuclear Site in the news lately? Amongst troubling headlines, like the layoffs of federal workers responsible for the cleanup, or big tech eyeing the site for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs), Columbia Riverkeeper’s Advocacy Director, Dan Serres, continues to center the Columbia River and all life connected to it as changes to the cleanup raise thousand year questions.
In January, the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) Agencies finalized and adopted the results of a 4-year closed door negotiation, the Holistic Settlement Agreement. The center of the agreement? Hanford’s tank waste— a byproduct of a decades-long military operation at Hanford, which produced two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium for nuclear weapons. In the wake of this new agreement, Riverkeeper continues to grapple with the changes and what they mean for cleanup that is protective for generations to come.
“It’s not negotiable that Hanford cleanup should go forward in a way that protects the people of the region. It’s just too important,” Dan Serres, advocacy director at Columbia Riverkeeper, told Columbia Insight. “This settlement underscores the importance of that work. The details of it are clearly uncertain.” Read more in the Columbia Insight’s piece, “Major agreement reached over nuclear waste.”
Speaking to the Oregon Capitol Chronicle on part of the settlement’s plans to move liquid nuclear waste through the state of Oregon, Serres puts the plan into context.
“The bigger context is that toxic and radioactive pollution reaches the river from the U.S. Department of Energy’s actions at Hanford, and now the area is too polluted for tribes to exercise their treaty rights, which is unacceptable,” Serres said via email. “The cleanup is ongoing – and it has accomplished major reductions in harm to people downstream and downwind – but it’s very challenging and incomplete.” Read more in the Capitol Chronicle’s piece, “Oregon officials concerned about federal proposal to move liquid nuclear waste through state”
Speaking to KIRO 7, along the banks of the Columbia River, Serres once again centers the people who have been saddled with deadly and radioactive nuclear waste and the absurdity in suggesting that they be burdened with more of that type of waste through the development of SMNRs. Watch “Amazon’s Nuclear Gamble.”
The Hanford Reach is vibrant, full of wildlife, salmon, free-flowing water, sand dunes, and rare plants. Despite the nuclear legacy that earns it the title of the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere, it remains immeasurably important, with a future worth fighting for.
