Join us on Friday, December 6th at noon PT for our next Nuclear Waste Scholar Series webinar. Jim Werner will present Long-term Stewardship of Nuclear Materials and Other Contaminated Sites.

Register: https://bit.ly/3C5AtBl

Regardless of how many hundreds of billions of dollars taxpayers spend, the waste and contamination from Atomic Energy Commission/Department of Energy nuclear warhead facilities will pose at least some residual hazards for longer than the recorded history of humans. Much of it will remain at the sites where it was generated and deposited, including the Pasco Basin at what we now call “Hanford,” a site scoured by Bretz’s Ice Age Floods. Jim Werner will address some questions that arise from this reality, including: What risks will the sites pose to humans and non-human ecosystems? How do we help ensure the durability of the five elements of long-term stewardship at these sites for millennia? How do the lessons learned from this challenge inform our decisions on “cleanup” standard setting and creating new wastes and contamination? And finally: 10,000 years? Seriously?

The Nuclear Waste Scholar Series is funded through a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology.