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Fast Facts
- DuPont Co.'s net profit for building
and operating Hanford Military Reservation's plutonium production
facilities during World War II: 56 cents
- Cost of construction: $230 million
- Cost of Hanford contamination cleanup as of 2002:
$35 billion
- Estimated additional cost to complete cleanup:
$50 billion
- Estimated amount of radiation leaked into the environment
at Hanford: 140 million curies*
- Amount released by Chernobyl reactor meltdown:
50 million curies
- Amount released by accident at Three Mile Island:
50 curies
- Amount of radioactive waste still stored as liquid
in tanks at Hanford: 200 million curies
- Number of construction workers housed at Hanford site
between 1943 and 1945: 50,000
- Population of Tri-Cities metropolitan area in 2000:
125,467
- Summer chinook salmon count on Snake River in 1960:
30,000
- Summer chinook count in 1965, after completion of first
Snake River Dam: 10,000
- Summer chinook count in 1975, after completion of fourth
dam: 5,000
- Estimated number of salmon of all species returning
to the Snake River in 1805: 5 million to 8 million
- Number today: 5,000
- Percent of the upper Columbia Basin's fall chinook
salmon that spawns in the Hanford Reach: 80
* The basic unit used to describe the
intensity of radioactivity in a sample of material. The curie
is equal to approximately the activity of 1 gram of radium.
Sources: U.S. Department of Energy; National
Research Council; Nuclear Regulatory Commission; U.S. Census
Bureau; Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission; Save Our
Wild Salmon Coalition; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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