Summary of Hanford Site Groundwater Monitoring for Fiscal Year 2003
This document is a summary of the larger report, PNNL-14548. It describes the groundwater monitoring results for FY 2003 at the Hanford Site in southeast Washington State. The Hanford Site, a facility in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons complex, encompasses {approx}1,517 square kilometers northwest of the city of Richland along the Columbia River in southeast Washington State. The federal government acquired the site in 1943, and until the 1980s it was dedicated primarily to the production of plutonium for national defense and the management of resulting waste. In 1995, all unrestricted discharge of radioactive liquid waste to the ground was discontinued. Today, DOE's mission on the Hanford Site is to restore the Columbia River corridor and transition the central portion of the site toward its long-term waste management role. DOE has monitored groundwater on the Hanford Site since the 1940s to help determine what chemical and radiological contaminants have made their way into the groundwater. As regulatory requirements for monitoring increased in the 1980s, there began to be some overlap between various programs. DOE established the Groundwater Performance Assessment Project (groundwater project) in 1996 to ensure protection of the public and the environment while improving the efficiency of monitoring activities. The groundwater project is designed to support all groundwater monitoring needs at the site, eliminate redundant sampling and analysis, and establish a cost-effective hierarchy for groundwater monitoring activities. Contamination may reach the Columbia River by moving down through the vadose zone, into the groundwater, and then into the river. The analysis of groundwater samples helps determine the potential effects that contaminants could have on human health and the environment. DOE works with the regulators, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), to make cleanup decisions based on sound technical information and the technical capabilities available.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC06-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 15007190
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-14548-SUM; 820101000; TRN: US200414%%356
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 12 Apr 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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