Radioactive Waste Being Pulled Up from Washington Burial Ground

The 618-10 Burial Ground is one of just two burial grounds at Hanford to use vertical pipe units for waste disposal. They were left for last, with work on the 618-11 Burial Ground yet to start. They were anticipated to be the most complex and challenging excavations in the area along the Columbia River.

From 1954-63, large cask trucks, heavily shielded to provide protection from radiation, carried highly radioactive laboratory waste to the burial ground about six miles north of Richland along the main highway to the Hanford Wye Barricade.

There the trucks would back up to the pipes and drop their cargo down.

Work started in 2009 to map the 618-10 Burial Ground to locate each buried pipe and estimate levels of radioactivity.