In Hanford, Wash., the country's most polluted nuclear reactor site draws tourists

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-hanford13-2008aug13,0,4624149.story


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Welcome to the Hanford Reach, where one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River encounters America's most contaminated nuclear site. Along this flat, mostly treeless scrubland, the U.S. government built nine reactors between 1943 and 1963, including the historic "B" plant that produced the world's first weapons-grade plutonium for the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.

The reactors have leaked so much radioactivity into the air, land and water that the contamination caused by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident seems trivial by comparison. Yet merchants and tourism directors here in southern Washington state see the river and the shuttered reactors as a growing tourist draw.

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The popular kayak tours are one example. Pat Welle, owner of Columbia Kayak Adventures, who leads two or three groups each month past the nuclear site, said her business had more than doubled since she started it in 2004. A jet-boat tour operator plans to add a second boat, and the river hosts several bass fishing tournaments each year.

"I think the attraction is the unique combination of scenery -- the white bluffs and the wildlife -- and that odd collection of nuclear sites," Welle said.

The reactors have long been shut down, but the surrounding land rumbles with bulldozers, dump trucks and crews in radiation suits working on a $2-billion-a-year cleanup project -- the most expensive such project in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Today, scientists and biologists extensively test almost every creature along the river, whether a tadpole or a deer.

Critics say that tourists who occasionally visit the Hanford Reach should be safe but that locals who regularly swim in, go boating on and eat fish from the river may have a higher risk of exposure to harmful contaminants, a charge that state health officials dispute.

"Would I eat fish out of that river? No way," said Gregory deBruler, an environmental health specialist with the Columbia Riverkeeper, a nonprofit environmental group

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In fact, Hanford's contamination is fodder for some lighthearted humor in nearby Richland.

At the Octopus' Garden, a T-shirt and novelty store, customers can buy shirts emblazoned with the radiation warning symbol and expressions such as "I came, I saw, I glow," "Hanford is a rad place to work" and "Kiss me, I'm hot."

And if the Hanford site becomes the tourist hot spot that locals envision, visitors can pick up souvenirs at the Octopus' Garden and then walk a few blocks to the Atomic Ale Brewpub and Eatery, where they can order atomic chicken skewers, chocolate containment cake and Atomic Amber beer, which is promoted as "radiating with flavor."
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if americans weren't so under educated they wouldn't go near that place.

the whole toxic area, along with HAZMAT warning signs.