On January 20, a critical hearing in Seattle may be the public's last chance to voice its opposition to a secretive, misleading, and devastating plan to restart nuclear weapon production in Washington State.

For almost a year, Washington State's Congressional delegation, the Dept. of Energy, and a shadowy business known as ANMS have been pushing hard to not only restart but privatize the production of tritium, a key nuclear weapon component. (See, most recently, ETS! #29, 3-25-97.) Sen. Patty Murray and Gov. Gary Locke, both Democrats, have endorsed the idea, putting forward the patently false claim that FFTF will produce nuclear isotopes to be sold privately to hospitals and medical research centers, ostensibly to "cure cancer."

Under the guise of using taxpayer money to produce medical isotopes to "cure cancer" (never mind that nuclear radiation has a long and sordid history of causing cancer), Gov. Locke supports and is pushing for the continued production of nuclear weaponry. And who exactly is this ANMS company that could be controlling the production and sale of one of the most dangerous substances on earth?

ANMS is a tiny partnership based in Ellensburg. Begun in 1995, it has no money and no experience in this line of business; it initially proposed to fund the restart with interest-free government loans. The two principals are William Stokes, an ex-DoE official, and Richard Thompson, an ex-Air Force officer and real estate developer. In 1996, Thompson had all of his personal accounts and records seized by the IRS after one of his real estate ventures collapsed. Thompson also was forced to resign his post as State Transportation Commissioner after allegations of sexual harassment.

ANMS is Thompson's most recent "get-rich-quick" scheme. In Nov. 1996, engineer Randall Bonebrake quit his job at Thompson & Associates and went public with documents detailing--among other things--an apparently illegal deal between ANMS and the European nuclear giant SBK to import and store nearly 300 German nuclear fuel assemblies at FFTF in exchange for getting $35.8 million in start-up funding. Bonebrake was arrested by Ellensburg authorities at the request of ANMS and charged with felony theft for "stealing" documents that were already in DoE possession or otherwise legally available to the public. The resulting trial ended in a hung jury last May. The whole sordid affair showed the extent to which ANMS (with the complicity of the DoE) would go to get FFTF funding. ANMS's generous campaign contributions have also helped to buy the active participation of politicians, including Murray and Locke, in this farce.

So far, Seattle media has ignored the restart of bomb-making at Hanford; all that we've seen is the smokescreen of the bogus "cure for cancer" story. At press conferences, advocates have literally paraded cancer victims weeping for joy at the chance that "they'll be cured"--a stunningly cynical exercise, given that: the technology is unproven; there is already an enormous surplus of medical isotopes on the market at prices far below what FFTF would cost; and the isotope production would come only after "a number of years" of tritium production to make the isotope start- up "financially feasible." The leading medical isotope researchers at the Univ. of Washington have denounced FFTF claims as absurd.

By parading phantom medical miracles, the bureaucrats, politicians, military planners, and businessmen conspiring to re-nuke Hanford have thus far avoided public discussion of the real issues: widespread environmental contamination; inadequate clean-up funding; illegal diversion of existing clean-up money to FFTF to prepare it for tritium production; severe worker safety issues; an ongoing pattern of secrecy and deceit among Hanford's contractors and managers; and the production of weapons that violate existing weapons treaties and undermine disarmament negotiations at a time when the U.S. lacks credible enemies and the rest of the world is moving to outlaw nukes entirely.

Two events in recent months highlight Hanford's ongoing nightmare:

On May 14, 1997, a chemical storage tank at Hanford exploded. Two chemicals--a plutonium stripping agent (hydroxylamine nitrate) and gaseous nitric acid--became volatile. The chemicals aren't hazardous when diluted heavily with water, but they were allowed to evaporate down to 35 gallons from more than 150 gallons. When they exploded, they blew the top off a heavy stainless steel tank, sheared the bolts that held the tank to a pedestal, and forced a huge bulge in the stainless steel ceilings above. A plume of brown gas and fumes rose over the entire site.

In the resulting confusion, managers at the facility's main building ordered eight workers to leave an outlying trailer and walk through the plume to the main building--without wearing protective gear. Other workers were ordered to go outside into the plume to check equipment and machinery, again with no protective gear. The workers fell sick immediately, but were forced to wait hours to see a doctor. The workers asked for nasal smears to be taken so that they could be tested for radiation exposure, but because the private company in charge of the clean-up, Fluor Daniel Hanford, didn't have the proper equipment to do the smears, the cultures were left laying around untested for over four weeks.

Hours after their initial exposure, workers were finally allowed to see physicians at the Kadlec Medical Center, where they were told by doctors sympathetic to the company that they were fine and that no blood or urine tests were needed. Since then, the company has admitted that more than 30 workers were exposed, that small quantities of plutonium were released in the chemical cloud, and that workers have complained of symptoms consistent with chemical exposure. So far, nothing has been done to address the workers' demands for adequate medical treatment. Secretary of Energy Frederico Pena visited the site and spoke with workers, but responded by putting Fluor Daniel Hanford in charge of investigating its own role in the disaster.

In a second development, a leaked report to the Associated Press in November forced Hanford officials to concede what activists have claimed for years: radioactive materials from Hanford's underground storage tanks have leached into the groundwater beneath the tanks, in some cases only yards away from the Columbia River. DoE officials claim (against all logic) that they don't believe the radioactive water will seep into the Columbia River, but admit they really don't know. They also don't know what's in over 200 such contaminated tanks; unfortunately, studies to determine exactly what mixture of poisons is in those decomposing toxic stews- -a task that is part of the legally mandated milestones for Hanford's clean-up effort--have not even been asked for in the DoE's upcoming budgets (let alone granted by Congress). None of the leaching radioactive mystery waste in the tanks has actually been removed; the tanks themselves, some built in the 1940s, were only built to last 25 years.

Other problems have arisen over the Hanford clean-up debacle. Workers continue to be exposed to gaseous, cancerous fumes from underground tanks storing radioactive waste and toxic chemicals in "Area 200," in the heart of the Hanford site. Private companies--including Westinghouse Hanford, the main site contractor--have been paid over $3.1 billion for a clean-up operation that is progressing so slowly that DoE officials admit the operation itself has yet to get underway.

In this environment, and against an ongoing history of public cover-ups, lies, and deceit, it's sheer insanity to propose that Hanford begin producing tritium again. This whole history of Hanford is a terrifying example of private enterprise run amok with the help of government complicity.

The insanity received a powerful boost in late November when Washington State's Department of Ecology, one of the three agencies (along with the federal Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency) legally charged with oversight of Hanford clean-up, yielded to pressure from Gov. Locke and federal officials and signed off on the FFTF plan. Activists then forced a reluctant DoE to hold public hearings on the resulting proposed changes in the law that governs Hanford's clean-up.

There will be several hearings regionally; in Seattle, on Tuesday, January 20, 1998, 7:00 PM, at the Northwest Rooms in the Seattle Center (see Calendar). Activists have two significant advantages: it's not a done deal, and there's a clear alternative (i.e., spending the legally required money that the DoE refuses to allocate for clean-up). Show up and sound off; the next few hundred thousand years of your descendents will thank you.

The U.S. Dept. of Energy and Wash. State Dept. of Ecology are accepting public comments on proposed changes to the Tri-Party Agreement milestones for the Fast Flux Test Facility. For information on who to write or what to say, contact Heart of America Northwest's toll-free "Hanford Cleanup" line, 1-800-321-2008.