My newly hired publicist emails me a link to an article in the Washington Post from July 10th covering a restart effort on Three Mile Island, suggesting I make a comment. Having devoured Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, I know exactly what I would rant about in a comment, but I click the link only to find the comment section closed. Six hundred and sixty-five other folks got there first. The article speaks to the growing movement.*
AI developers, manufacturers, and energy regulators seem keen to take a new look at old nuclear plants, even the one along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania where a 1979 partial reactor meltdown created panic nationwide. The pitch? Such plants, albeit with new modular technology and fewer human hands, would provide zero-emissions electricity.
No one talks about the waste. We still don’t know how or where to deal with the waste, the subject of the non-fiction narrative published in 2022 by award-winning investigative journalist and author, Joshua Frank.
Author, Investigative Journalist, Joshua Frank, 2022
I reached out to Frank after reading his book. He lives in southern California and has been a regular contributor to CounterPunch.org for over a decade. Frank became the managing editorial director in recent years. In the context of renewed support for atomic power as a means of combating climate change, Atomic Days provides a much-needed refutation of the myths of nuclear technology—from weapons to electricity. A steady refrain threads Josh’s Instagram page: Say no the nukes!
One evening in February, we connected via Zoom on all things nuclear waste, and Hanford, the largest environmental disaster site in the Western Hemisphere, the main star of Frank’s narrative and the backdrop for my debut novel (TANGLES). Frank's book, Atomic Days, shines a spotlight on the ravages of Hanford and its threat to communities, workers, and the global environment.
Frank and KSB on Zoom in February 2024
Frank is originally from Billings, Montana. I tell him that I flew in and out of Billings the two summers that I worked in Yellowstone during my college years. We both express our horror at the nuclear project, backed by Bill Gates, in Kemmerer, Wyoming.**
Kemmerer borders the Bridger-Teton National Forest which rolls into the Grand Tetons National Park which borders Yellowstone National Park which is capped by the Custer Gallatin National Forest. Neither of us says that out loud. The idea of putting a nuclear plant so close to such irreplaceable national treasures is stunning.
Bridger-Teton National Forest
Frank’s path to becoming a vocal critic of Hanford, the Department of Energy, and the current contractor, Bechtel, like most paths of discovery, was circuitous.
At Portland State in Oregon in the late 90s, he became involved in environmental causes. “The first time I heard about Hanford was in college. The forest wars were going on then.” I think back to images of protestors living in old-growth trees and burying themselves in the ground in front of bulldozers as PNW timber companies clear-cut the last available forests. Chainsaws felling centuries-old conifers for a buck.
Frank became a forest activist. “But I knew Hanford was there. I’d heard about it.” He took a position with a non-profit group, Oregon Trout, surveying streams along the John Day River.
John Day River, photo credit Alan Majchrowicz
“We were looking at salmon habitat. I bunked up in a remote forest ranger cabin with other staffers. A couple of the guys had worked at Hanford.” Many stories later, Frank understood there was a serious problem at Hanford. “Basically, these guys said, ‘Stay away.’”
Frank eventually moved East to go to graduate school at New York University (NYU). Around 2005, he became more interested in Hanford, and began submitting to CounterPunch.org. He became close to its then managing editor, Jeffery St. Clair, a legendary investigative journalist and prolific author. “I loved Jeff’s first magazine, the Wild Forest Review. It documented all the stuff I’d been involved in during my undergrad years.”
Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch long-time editor and author
A couple of years later, packing a Master’s degree in Environmental Conservation and about to get married, Frank visited Hanford for the first time. “Driving home from graduate school, I cruised around Richland,” he recalls. “At that point, I was just intrigued. I knew what Hanford was, and what Richland was [a company town].” But Frank admits he did not fully understand what was going on inside the fence. “This was 2008. Obama was running for President.”
The Hanford Reach
“Jeff and I floated The Reach (the stretch of the Columbia River alongside the Hanford reservation). Just the two of us” Frank smiles at the memory. “My bachelor party weekend.” Frank admits that it wasn’t much of a party, but that weekend St. Clair gave Frank some people to talk to about Hanford.
“I was freelance writing at the time, mainly for the Seattle Weekly. So, I called up Tom Carpenter at the Hanford Challenge, a citizens advocacy group for the cleanup, and said, ‘Hey, I’m interested in covering Hanford, have you got anything?’”
Carpenter responded, “Not at the moment but I’ll keep you in the loop if something comes up.”
Tom Carpenter, founder of the Hanford Challenge
Two months later, a Union guy calls Frank up, and says, “I got something for you, kid.” Frank received documents on two big whistleblowers: Walt Tamosaitis was one. “Walt becomes the biggest whistleblower in the last twenty years at Hanford. The Weekly article I wrote ended up making national news. Walt’s story blew up.”
Walt Tamosaitis testifing
“What got Walt in trouble was his doubts about the mixers,” Frank explains. Walt’s employer, URS, was a subcontractor for Bechtel at the Hanford waste treatment plant.”
“The mixers were a key part of the proposed process for turning the [nuclear] waste into glass,” Frank spins his finger like a concrete truck tank spinning. “And Walt believed that they weren’t going to work.”
Franks explains Tamosaitis’ thinking. “Once you start them up, the lids had to be sealed shut, and if hydrogen builds up there is no release for it.” Think explosion. “Plus, they were already having corrosion issues with some of the mixer tests.”
So Walt goes to Donald Alexander at the Department of Energy and says, “Our tests show this isn’t going to function well, and could lead to a disaster down the road. It might be cost-effective to do Plan B, but Plan A is not going to work.”
Alexander, a chemist in the DOE’s Nuclear Safety Division, expressed similar concerns to the higher-ups. Frank shakes his head. “Hypothetically, the DOE is running the show, but in reality, maybe not.”
Frank goes on to explain that Walt gets into a bunch of trouble for daylighting the potential risks. “The process incentive in the contract rules the day. Not the effectiveness of what they are building.” Translation: As long as the contractor is building something, they get paid.
But Alexander remains on Walt’s side, giving credence to a future lawsuit. Frank grins, “And this is a microcosm of events that happen a lot out there.”
Frank, managing editor of CounterPunch via Zoom, February 2024
The last time Frank spoke with Walt, he was still devastated. “He won a big lawsuit, but large settlements don’t fix things. The contractor or the DOE didn’t have to admit wrongdoing.” Frank wags his head, threading his hair with his fingers. “It wasn’t about the money for Walt. He wanted folks to be safe. To go to work every day. They ruined his career.”***
So even with Alexander in Walt’s corner, URS fired Walt. “And Alexander became a whistleblower by default, but he was protected in a sense, well respected. The DOE “couldn’t touch him” and he only had five years till retirement.” Evidently, the DOE weighed Alexander’s expansive knowledge against his stance and decided to keep him.
Frank used this incident as his entry point into “the mess of Hanford,” and subsequently his book. Atomic Days, published 2022, won the IPPY award for regional non-fiction and the Nellie Bly CIBA book award for journalistic non-fiction.***
Book cover of Atomic Days, available at all major booksellers
“Donald’s a really interesting guy,” Frank says of Alexander. “He worked in Savannah (Oak Ridge Nuclear facility), too. He led the U.S. delegation to Russia in the 90s, after the Cold War ended, to look at the Mayak Nuclear Station, a massive secret nuclear facility.*****
“Donald was in charge of the US delegation to Russia to inspect Mayak.” Frank grimaces. “Mayak produced plutonium for the first Russian atomic bomb. When a waste storage tank exploded in 1957, the event was covered up. “On a scale of radioactive accidental releases, not including the bombs,” Frank says, “Mayak was the 3rd largest accident. But most people don’t know it exists. That’s by design because it was a weapons facility.”
Mayak post-explosion and partial cleanup
Frank explains how Mayak is still a lingering disaster. The explosion was a Chernobyl-like event. “Killed a bunch of people, eviscerated all this farmland, [an area] very similar to Hanford. Rural, agricultural, easy to move people out to build it as the residents were either very patriotic or just turned a blind eye to it.”
Alexander returns to the U.S. in the late 90s really worried about something like Mayak happening at Hanford. This is toward the end of Hanford’s production years.
“Most of the Hanford waste is sitting in these hulking underground leaky tanks that are bubbling.” Frank shakes his head. “They have this idea of vitrifying it – turning it into glass – and of course, none of that is really happening.”
Franks explains Alexander’s other concerns. Several things could go wrong at Hanford. The biggest problem, as Frank explains, “is a lot of these tanks contain hydrogen. Think boiling water. You have to let the steam out, right? With hydrogen, it builds up from the decomposing waste in the tanks, and you have to let it leak out.”
Unearthed waste tanks at Hanford
“But all the tanks have different stuff in them. Different elements in each tank, with different [chemical] reactions possible in each. The guys who have dealt with this stuff for their whole careers don’t even know what’s in the various tanks.” Frank rolls his eyes, before continuing. “Donald is a great guy.” Alexander retired but remains involved. Frank notes, “He’s still on some of the committees for oversight.”
Franks leans back in his chair and laughs. “It’s totally crazy, but they can measure the hydrogen levels inside the tanks. So that’s good, but, back to Donald’s real concern, if the hydrogen ignites, game over.”
Frank says the potential explosion could be huge, and at Hanford, it could set off a chain reaction. “You don’t even want to speculate about what such an explosion would do to the Northwest, let alone the downwinders – meaning everyone and everything south and southeast of Hanford. Think Oregon, Idaho, California, Wyoming, Utah taking the airborne fallout.
“The biggest fear is that something like that could happen. especially Richland to Boise, folks wouldn’t want to raise their kids there.”
Franks shoots me a wry smile as I take in the threat. “It’s a real possibility, and it’s something the contractors, the engineers, and even the DOE don’t want to talk about.” All except Donald Alexander, now retired. “He has spoken out about it. His concern is real.”
Frank reiterates that most of the whistleblowers are older, more willing go up against their younger bosses after a lifetime of experience. “But they ruined Walt’s life,” Frank laments. “Walt broke the dam, and others came after him.
Donna Busche, a nuclear engineer and health physicist managing the Environmental and Nuclear Safety for URS, the contractor who Walt Tamosaitus worked for as well, added her voice to the cause.******
Donna Busche, former URS employee and Hanford whistleblower
“But, I think the dam of whistleblowers has been sealed back up,” Frank says. “And now there is less and less scrutiny, which is unfortunate.” He shakes his head, tugging on his hair as he speaks. “I’m also worried about an environmental disaster. The corroded tanks are leaking into the Columbia River, the main groundwater supply. That’s an ongoing problem.”
“And I’m worried about the cost.” Frank explains that the amount of money being poured into the current (vitrification) process has little or no government oversight. He also finds the employees of Hanford, and the residents of Richland very interesting. “All of this stuff is happening in their backyard, and yet, Richland embodies the idea of the Good War, and the legacy of the bomb. They believe Hanford is [to be revered], when really it’s a graveyard of atomic waste.”
Unlike, Trish Pritikin's, Hanford Plaintiffs or Gayle Greene's, The Woman Who Knew Too Much, volumes that focused on the after-effects, Frank’s book Atomic Days is centered on the Hanford contractors and the internal mechanisms (and failings) of the long and arduous cleanup of millions of gallons of radioactive waste. We segue to the B Reactor tour. When Josh went, he didn’t sign a waiver. Now anyone taking the tour must sign one.
Interior of B Reactor museum, stop on the tour
“To me,” Josh says, “it’s sort of like Chinese dolls. The reactor tour symbolizes the essence of Americana. The Good War. But then, within that doll, the broader thing is Hanford itself.” He winks. “You can’t get more American than Hanford: a key part of the Manhattan Project, the fuel that was used in the bombing of Nagasaki.”
“And it’s left this horrible legacy. “Eviscerated Native lands, and millions of gallons of waste (56 million to be exact), costing billions and billions of dollars ($677 billion price tag that keeps growing) to clean up. And they are getting nowhere.”
Joshua Frank, author of Atomic Days, via Zoom February 2024
He shakes his head again. “The mythology of America. The history that isn’t told.”
I confess that my underlying motivation in all of my manuscripts is debunking such mythology, especially the tropes of the mid-20th century, before circling back to my original premise.
“Can you speak to this alternative narrative? The nuclear-clean-energy messaging?”
Frank cites Nuscale, Inc., founded in Oregon. They have plans for small modular reactors along the Columbia River, but they have to build them on the Washington State side. Oregon passed a law that no new nuclear reactors could be built without having vetted waste disposal as part of the build, which of course, doesn't exist. But another group is pushing for these small reactors to be built at Hanford, where no such law is in place. Nuscale is filing for bankruptcy, but the propaganda-like website remains online.*******
Nuscale modular nuclear reactor
He asks if I’ve heard of the documentary film, Atomic Bamboozle. Frank is friends with the director, a retired professor from Portland University. It’s her third film. “It explains how the public is being bamboozled into thinking nuclear energy is green.” Frank sits back in his chair. “I’ll send you the link.”********
I joke that I should screen it at my book launch party in December.
He leans back into the screen. “Nuscale, that’s the technology Gates is touting. The small modular reactors for the nuclear power plant in Kemmerer.”
I push back in my chair, remembering the majesty of my days at Yellowstone. The free-flowing ice-cold Snake River abundant with fish, the bears of Hayden Valley, and the clockwork thermal eruptions of Old Faithful. All of that could be at risk.
It’s my turn to shake my head. “Welcome to Wyoming.”
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