Hanford Nuclear Reservation Story

I worked at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where the material for the first nuclear bomb was made from 2009 to 2011. I had graduated college during the recession and managed to snag an ARRA job. Hanford had acquired 2 billion dollars for nuclear cleanup.

I moved to Richland Washington and worked on a crew that excavated nuclear waste for repackaging. We dug it up with a construction crew and lots of heavy machinery.

On a hot dry day I was conducting a safety walk and stopped. There in the desert were millions of tiny lizards congregating around a structural vault that held nuclear waste. They were licking it. Turns out nuclear contamination fixitive is mostly sugar water. I was in awe of this. Animals at Hanford can be radioactive. The bunnies are notorious for rolling in contamination as are the fruit flies who eat fixitive. We even had a trapper look at a gopher hole.