The Most Toxic Nuclear Facility in the US Is in Lockdown

Early Tuesday morning, an emergency was declared at a nuclear site in Washington State after a tunnel containing radioactive material sunk in. This area of the massive Hanford complex, known as 200 East, has about 3,000 employees on site, all of whom have been told to shelter in place and avoid eating or drinking anything. The tunnel was connected to a plutonium uranium extraction (PUREX) complex, which saw about 75 percent of the plutonium processed from irradiated fuel rods at Hanford pass through its doors between 1956 and 1972 and 1983 to 1988. PUREX is connected to two tunnels by rail, which are used as a long-term storage option for materials removed from the plant. Together they provide enough storage space for 48 rail cars, although how much radioactive material was present in the tunnel at the time of the emergency hasn't been determined. Officials are still trying to piece together what went wrong. "There is no confirmation of a tunnel collapse," a Hanford Site spokesperson told me over the phone. "What we saw that caused us to declare the emergency was a small area of sunken soil that covered the tunnel in question. There is no evidence of a radioactive release or contamination. All staff are accounted for and right now we have the Hanford Fire Department on standby." Continue reading on Motherboard.