The relics of the nation's World War II and Cold War past spread across 580 sq miles of a desert plateau in southeastern Washington state in the form of decaying buildings and storage tanks that sustained plutonium production from 1943 to 1987. For more than three decades at the massive Hanford site near Richland, Wash., the U.S. Energy Dept. has tasked employees and multiple contractors to assess and clean up the daunting environmental legacy of making America's nuclear weapons. Billions of dollars have been spent, but billions more are needed.
展开▼
