Hanford Nuclear Reservation is a government facility located on the Columbia River. This facility was part of the Manhattan project, and is sometimes known as the Hanford Project. At Hanford the first plutonium reactor was created, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan had plutonium from Hanford, WA.
As a result of the multiple reactors that were developed at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation approximately 1 terabecquerels, which is 10^12becquerels, and a becquerel is the SI derived unit of radioactivity, and 1 Bq = 1 /s or the rate at which it takes 1 nucleus to decay per second. The water was siphoned out of the Columbia River, and flowed through the cooling basins to cool the reactors. After the reactors the water flowed into a retention basin where the pollution is to settle out, for approximately 6 hours before it was discharged back into the Columbia River. The radiation developed in the water was not affected by the retention basin. Radioactive readings were evident in the water near the mouth of the Columbia off the coasts of Oregon and Washington.
all information in this blog is found at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
Has hanford ever placed any contamination signs along the river to allow people to see that it is contaminated? I mean, it’s obvious that it is but its just the matter of fact, you know? Did it affect the wildlife in the area?