Hanford landfill has taken 20 million tons of waste since 1996 and is expanding

At the centre of Washington state’s sprawling Hanford Site, an enormous engineered landfill is being made larger as one of the United States’ biggest environmental cleanup programmes continues. According to the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF) has been receiving waste since 1996. Over that time, 20 million tons of material from cleanup operations have been placed there, including low-level radioactive and hazardous waste. Now, workers have finished excavating another section of the landfill. The new disposal cell is 80 feet deep and covers an area roughly 500 feet wide and 1,000 feet long. Once its protective liner is installed, it will provide another 2.8 million cubic yards of capacity.How ERDF handles waste from Hanford’s cleanup workERDF sits on the Central Plateau, close to the middle of the 580-square-mile Hanford Site. It was opened in 1996 to give crews carrying out environmental restoration somewhere to take certain solid wastes removed during the cleanup.Its contents are not limited to one type of material. The facility receives low-level radioactive waste, hazardous waste and mixed solid waste produced by Hanford clean...