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Battelle
PNNL Expertise Guides
Hanford Monitoring

wildlife collageThe Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state is a former plutonium production facility, where Battelle scientists from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) meet the challenges of the site with a wide range of monitoring techniques. Air, soil, vegetation, fish, wildlife, weather, cultural resources, and the nearby Columbia River must be monitored on a regular basis, because of the current environmental cleanup, as well as the nature of work conducted at Hanford in the past.

The monitoring program is not confined to the 586 square miles of shrub-steppe habitat that make up the Hanford Site, some of which was recently designated as the Hanford Reach National Monument. Samples are collected offsite at communities up to 50 miles away. Information generated by the monitoring program is used extensively in the Hanford decision-making process, supporting waste cleanup activities, assessing human health and environmental impacts, and assuring the protection of public health and ecological and cultural resources.

For more information, contact Roger Dirkes at (509) 376-8177, rl.dirkes@pnl.gov.