Join us on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at the REACH Museum in Richland, WA from 5:30-7:30pm to hear rare recordings from the 1940s. The presentation will start promptly at 6pm.

Register here.

Jay Needham will be sharing selections from his personal collection of archival recordings made by his grandfather as a hobby while working at Hanford in the 1940s. His grandfather, Lt. Colonel William Sapper—a Manhattan Project engineer—used his Soundscriber dictation machine to document original jazz music, limericks, and labor poems, as well as to conduct interviews and record regional radio broadcasts. Jay’s mother, Lynn Needham, grew up in Richland during the Second World War. Jay will discuss the making and restoration of the recordings and how the war-era history of Richland played a defining role in the paths he would take in life and in his artistic career.

Jay Needham is an artist, writer/editor and educator whose works have appeared at museums, festivals and on the airwaves, worldwide. As a multi-instrumentalist and visual artist, he creates sound art, music, productions for radio, visual art, performances, and installations that activate listening as a vital component of artistic perception. Through his works, he explores themes of militarism, surveillance, family archives, ecology, and autoethnography that are often informed by his life-long relationship to hearing loss. He is a Professor in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University.

This event is free and open to the public; however, you must be registered for the event to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.

This event is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Join us on Friday, December 15th at noon PT to hear Tom Sicilia present, The Runway to a Supermodel: How to build a model and what it all means.

Register here

At Hanford, models are used to do things like predict how contamination moves in the environment. In his talk, Tom Sicilia is going to share a brief overview of what models are, what makes them wrong (but useful, sometimes), and some ways they are used at Hanford, including the Cumulative Impact Evaluation. There will be calculus.

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Join us for the next Nuclear Waste Scholar Series webinar on Friday, December 1st at noon PT to hear Shampa Biswas and Anne Harrington present, Decolonizing Nuclear Studies: Incorporating Race, Gender, and the Environment in the Teaching of Nuclear Studies.

With the help of a grant from the Ploughshares Fund to decolonize the nuclear studies curriculum, Shampa Biswas and Anne Harrington collaborated with a group of scholars to build three teaching modules that center questions of race, colonialism, gender, and the environment as they relate to nuclear weapons. This webinar will introduce participants to the resources available in each of the modules, which can be incorporated into efforts to educate students, policy makers, advocates, and activists about nuclear weapons production and use, as well as nuclear arms control and disarmament.

REGISTER HERE

Shampa Biswas is the Judge & Mrs. Timothy A. Paul Chair of Political Science at Whitman College. She is a postcolonial International Relations theorist whose work examines the inequalities of the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime. She is the author of Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order (University of Minnesota Press, 2014). She is currently working on a project on nuclear memorialization and the global story of Fat Man.

Anne I. Harrington is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Cardiff University. Anne earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2010. Since then she has held fellowships at major universities in the US and Europe, including the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich. In 2013-2014, she worked for the United States Congress as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, first as a National Security Fellow in the office of Senator Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY) and then at the Congressional Research Service where she co-authored a report on US Department of Defense cyber operations. Her publications have appeared, among other places, in the Nonproliferation Review, Millennium, Critical Studies on Security, Foreign Policy, Task & Purpose, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Her most recent publication is a co-edited volume (with Jeffrey Knopf), Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons.

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Join us for the Unmaking the Bomb book launch on Nov 2nd at 6pm PT at the UW Bookstore in Seattle. Hanford Challenge's Liz Mattson will be facilitating a conversation with the author, Shannon Cram.

This event is free to attend, though registration is required through the link provided.

Purchase a copy of the book here or through your local bookstore.

REGISTER HERE

What does it mean to reckon with a contaminated world? In Unmaking the Bomb, Shannon Cram considers the complex social politics of this question and the regulatory infrastructures designed to answer it. Blending history, ethnography, and memoir, she investigates remediation efforts at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a former weapons complex in Washington State. Home to the majority of the nation's high-level nuclear waste and its largest environmental cleanup, Hanford is tasked with managing toxic materials that will long outlast the United States and its institutional capacities. Cram examines the embodied uncertainties and structural impossibilities integral to that endeavor. In particular, this lyrical book engages in a kind of narrative contamination, toggling back and forth between cleanup's administrative frames and the stories that overspill them. It spends time with the statistical people that inhabit cleanup's metrics and models and the nonstatistical people that live with their effects. And, in the process, it explores the uneven social relations that make toxicity a normative condition.

Radioactive alligators, burping tanks, clandestine surveillance, and a glowing fish lab?! 

We can't wait to share these Spooky Stories and more at Hanford Challenge's joint online event with Columbia Riverkeeper! Join us Friday, October 13th from 12 - 1:15pm PT on Zoom. When you register, you’ll be entered to win a copy of Shannon Cram’s new book, Unmaking the Bomb: Environmental Cleanup and the Politics of Impossibility.

Register here

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series returns! Join us on Friday, September 29th at noon PT to hear Ariana Tibon-Kilma discuss a brief history of the events that took place in the Marshall Islands and highlight the generational gap in knowledge about the history of nuclear testing in her home and the challenges resulting from this lack of knowledge.

REGISTER HERE

Ariana is a descendant of survivors of the catastrophic Bravo Shot that was detonated in the Marshall Islands. She lives with her family in Majuro, where she works with students and youth to encourage engagement in nuclear dialogue.

Ariana writes “Although the testing began in 1946, it was not until 2019 - I repeat 2019, that the nuclear legacy was finally integrated into school systems. And so, growing up, I had no idea that my own family were test subjects in this. In project 4.1, which was top-secret medical study, and that the test subjects for that were human beings. Those human beings were my family. And that’s how I became so dedicated to this work and realized that education is such an important role because many generations have missed this history, our piece of history. The generation before me, my parents’ generation, my grandparent’s generation.” 

Ariana Tibon-Kilma works as a Commissioner at the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) National Nuclear Commission. Ariana helped develop a nuclear legacy curriculum for the RMI’s Public Schools System and co-taught a Nuclear Issues in the Pacific course at the College of the Marshall Islands. Ariana holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Join us in commemorating the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Sunday, August 6th for the 39th annual From Hiroshima to Hope event in Seattle, WA. Hanford Challenge is an event sponsor and we will be tabling, so please stop by and say hello!

The event starts at 6pm at Green Lake, south of the Bathhouse Theater. There will be music, meditation, and Yukiyo Kawano’s “Little Boy (folded)” sculpture. Rev. Dr. Kelle J. Brown will give a keynote speech at 7pm. The lantern floating ceremony starts at 8pm.

“The mission of From Hiroshima to Hope is to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all victims of war and violence. We educate for peace, non-violent conflict resolution and nuclear disarmament through a public outdoor event on August 6th featuring music, speakers, and a lantern-floating ceremony.” (From Hiroshima to Hope website)

Find more information about the event here.

Join us on Friday, June 2nd at noon PT to hear from Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER). Dr. Makhijani will dig into the issues we face in the U.S. as we navigate how to dispose and manage our nuclear waste. IEER provides the public with accurate scientific information to promote the democratization of science and a safer, healthier environment.

Register here

Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of IEER, holds a Ph.D. in engineering (specialization: nuclear fusion) from the University of California at Berkeley. He has produced many studies and articles on nuclear fuel cycle related issues, including weapons production, testing, and nuclear waste, over the past twenty years. He is the principal author of the first study ever done (completed in 1971) on energy conservation potential in the U.S. economy.
Dr. Makhijani has authored many books including, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, the first analysis of a transition to a U.S. economy based completely on renewable energy, without any use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. He is the principal editor of Nuclear Wastelands and the principal author of Mending the Ozone Hole. His most recent book (2023) is Exploring Tritium Dangers.

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Join Hanford Challenge and the High School Meaningful Movies group on Thursday, May 18th from 6:30-8:30pm for an online screening of the documentary, Into Eternity.

The 2010 film directed by Michael Madsen follows the construction of the Onkalo nuclear waste repository in Finland. Addressing an audience in the remote future, the film questions the intended eternal existence of the nuclear waste site, one that must remain untouched for 100,000 years. Into Eternity tackles the technical uncertainties and multi-generational impacts of nuclear waste disposal.

After the film screening, there will be a discussion with guest speaker, Kevin Kamps, from the organization Beyond Nuclear.

Register Here

Joshua McGuffie will tell the stories of scientists from the medical section of the Manhattan Project and share their research on the biological effects of radiation at the Hanford Fish Lab and in the Marshall Islands. In June 1945, a team of medical doctors and fisheries biologists gathered at UC Berkeley to discuss the research program for a new and unique laboratory. The lab stood on the southern shore of the Columbia River, close to the F Pile at the Hanford Nuclear Site. The Fish Lab, as it came to be called, was designed to study the effects of the reactor’s radioactive effluent on the valuable salmon and steelhead trout populations that spawned in the Columbia and its tributaries. 

Joshua’s talk will describe how the aquatic biology and radiology programs at Hanford developed in the 1940s in the context of the larger Medical Section. Joshua tracks how Dick Foster came to Hanford from the original Medical Section establishment in the Pacific Northwest, the Applied Fisheries Laboratory at the University of Washington. The story follows Foster’s research at Hanford and his trip with the UW biologists to Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. There, they studied the biological effects of the two atomic tests conducted during Operation Crossroads in 1946. Hanford’s story often makes the site seem like a uniquely atomic place. The Fish Lab’s story shows how intimately Hanford fit into America’s larger atomic geography.

REGISTER HERE

Joshua McGuffie is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at UCLA. His research focuses on the intersections between biology, medicine, race, and the environment during the US atomic project. Joshua earned an MA at Oregon State University, where he studied ecologists working at Hanford’s Arid Lands Ecology Reserve. Along with his academic career, Joshua serves as a parish pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He and his family live in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles, and love taking to the trails on the weekend.

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Join Hanford Challenge, Patagonia, and the Seattle University School of Law Environmental Law Society on Wednesday, April 19 for an evening of photography and stories.

Together, we are excited to host an evening with journalist and photographer, Tim Connor.

The Hanford Nuclear Site sits on the banks of the Columbia River, threatening water, wildlife, and ways of life. It remains one of the most contaminated sites in the Western Hemisphere.

Our event will begin at 6pm. Enjoy local refreshments and settle in for an evening of photographs, storytelling, and community.

RSVP strongly encouraged, but not required.

Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 6pm
Patagonia Seattle, 2100 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA 98121
RSVP encouraged, but not required

More about Tim Connor: Photographer and author Tim Connor will discuss his newly released book, Beautiful Wounds: A Search for Solace and Light in Washington's Channeled Scablands.

Tim uses the landscape as a portal into deep time—showing through photographs and historical narrative how the geography and landscape of the Hanford Site was shaped by cataclysmic flooding over 15,000 years ago. By looking at the past transformation of the land over time, we can begin to visualize a far-away future for Hanford.

Tim Connor is a national award-winning journalist/photographer and activist based in Spokane, WA. He is perhaps best known for his multi-year investigations and Congressional testimony into wide-reaching safety and environmental hazards at the Hanford Nuclear Site.

This event is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Irene Lusztig will be sharing clips from her latest documentary film titled, RICHLAND, which offers a portrait of a community staking its identity and future on its nuclear origin story. The film moves between archival past and observational present, and blooms into an expansive and lyrical meditation on home, safety, whiteness, land, and deep time. Irene is a feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, and educator. Through her films, Irene works in a space of delicate mediation between people, their pasts, and the present-tense landscapes and spaces where unresolved histories bloom and erupt.

Register Here

Irene Lusztig is a feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, and educator. She works in a space of delicate mediation between people, their pasts, and the present-tense spaces and landscapes where unresolved histories bloom and erupt. Born in England and raised in Boston, Irene is a first generation American whose parents fled Ceaucescu’s Romania as political asylum-seekers. Her work has been screened around the world and she has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright, two MacDowell fellowships, the Flaherty Film Seminar, and the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship. She teaches filmmaking at UC Santa Cruz where she is Professor of Film and Digital Media.

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Jay Needham will invite you to travel back to the 1940's through his personal collection of archival recordings that his grandfather made as a hobby with his Soundscriber dictation machine.

Narrative Half-Life is a continuing series of sound recordings about Hanford that co-mingle and complicate family histories. Jay heard these family histories from his grandfather, Lt. Colonel William Sapper—who was a Manhattan Project engineer—and from his mother, Lynn Needham, who grew up in Richland during the Second World War.

In Jay's presentation, he'll share how the war-era history of Richland played a defining factor in the paths he would take in life and in his artistic career. A highlight of his presentation will include songs that his grandfather's colleagues wrote that feature lyrics about creating plutonium and life in Richland, two years before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Jay’s grandfather also documented original jazz music, limericks, and labor poems, as well as conducted interviews and recorded regional radio broadcasts.

Register Here

Jay Needham is an artist, musician, researcher, writer-editor and cultural producer who utilizes multiple creative platforms to produce his works, many of which have a focus on sound and site specific field research. As a hearing-divergent person, Needham explores present and emerging ecologies of the electromagnetic spectrum that often feature the sense of sound and vibration as a component in the interpretation of his works. His sound art, productions for radio, visual art, performances and installations have appeared at museums, festivals and on the airwaves, worldwide. His most recent sound installation is on permanent display in the BioMuseo, designed by Frank Gehry in The Republic of Panama.

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Join Patagonia and Hanford Challenge this Wednesday to celebrate the launch of the “We All Live Downriver from Hanford” mural. Limited space available, so RSVP today.
 

We All Live Downriver from Hanford
Mural Launch Celebration
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
6pm
Patagonia Seattle, 2100 1st Ave S, Seattle, WA 98121
Free with RSVP
 

Join us to officially launch our mural–"We All Live Downriver from Hanford" at Patagonia Seattle. Rena Priest, the current Washington State Poet Laureate, will kick off the event with some poetry. Other speakers include Laura Watson, Director of the Washington State Department of Ecology; Nikolas Peterson, Executive Director of Hanford Challenge; Denis Tuzinovic, Environmental Coordinator at Patagonia; and Kathleen Flenniken, the Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012-2014.

Doors will open at 6pm. Enjoy local refreshments, grab a limited-edition surprise, and settle in for an evening of poetry and community.

Join our call to action to ensure a safe and effective cleanup at Hanford. Because in the end, “we all live downriver from Hanford.”

Roger Peet will discuss the Shinkolobwe mine, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that sourced nearly all of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project. The uranium that powered the discovery of nuclear fission and its use in the first atomic weapons came from Shinkolobwe. Vastly more concentrated and powerful than any other deposit of uranium found anywhere else on Earth, the Shinkolobwe ore made possible an apocalyptic effort of engineering that has transformed the way that power works in the modern world. The mine's exploitation has left a legacy of contaminated territories, poisoned communities, and a gross shadow of atomic devastation which echoes through our most popular contemporary stories, and clouds our ability to imagine a different world. Roger’s presentation will describe the arc of that history, and display an original linocut map-print which traces the evidence left behind in the landscape by those Congolese rocks; the foundation of the Manhattan Project.

Roger Peet is an artist and printmaker in Portland, OR. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, a group of North American artists creating visual tools for social and environmental movements, and coordinates the national Endangered Species Mural Project for the Center for Biological Diversity. He is currently collaborating with organizers and activists in Congo, Japan, and across the USA to connect the story of the Shinkolobwe mine to the broader history of America's nuclear legacy, including the contaminated landscapes of the Hanford Site.

Register Here

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.

Etsuko Ichikawa will talk about her recent body of work, VITRIFIED, in which she uses uranium glass as a key element in her sculpture, installation, film, and photography. This particular choice of material relates to a shift in her personal values that occurred after the devastating 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown in her home country of Japan. During the lecture, she plans to share a few short clips from her films including, Echo at Satsop, which was filmed entirely inside the cooling tower at Satsop—an abandoned nuclear power plant in Elma, WA.

Etsuko is a Tokyo-born, U.S. based multi-media artist, filmmaker, and activist. She is currently traveling nomadically around the globe with her art residencies.

Register here

Photo Credit: Lincoln Potter

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. The content was reviewed for grant consistency, but is not necessarily endorsed by the agency.