We had a great field trip this week with several of the students from the Science and Management of Contaminated Sites (SMoCS) class. It was ten hours round trip, 2 vans, and 1 night with tours of the PNNL labs and Hanford. We saw Dr. Nik Qafoku's labs where different waste forms are investigated. The waste forms are the different ways that waste can be stored. Vitrification, for example, essentially turns the waste into glass - that is one waste form. We also saw the 300 Area IFRC Field Test Site. This is a site with uranium contamination in the ground water that PNNL scientists are studying. On the second day, we toured Hanford and saw Reactor B, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (another name for the landfill where all of the low level radioactive waste is going), the vitrification plant, and a pump and treat plant. Really neat to see the science behind all of this!
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