After World War II, plutonium was chosen as the primary fissile material for the huge nuclear arsenal which was built up in America during the Cold War. Plutonium production reactors at Hanford continued to produce material for atomic weapons until 1988.
It cannot be denied that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle.
Historically, the atom bomb played a role in ending World War II, and may have saved both American and Japanese lives which would have been lost in an American invasion of Japan.
For better or worse, nuclear weapons also played a major role in the fifty years of the Cold War by enforcing the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) which came about when The United States and the Soviet Union built their nuclear arsenals to such levels that a nuclear exchange was unthinkable.
A debate also continues about the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Some nations rely on nuclear reactors for a major portion of their electrical energy needs, and have found reactors to be relatively safe and manageable. Many people, however, are concerned about nuclear accidents like Chernobyl, and about the unsolved dangers of highly radioactive waste disposal.
The legacy of nuclear weapons production is twofold:
1. The presence of large numbers of warheads, and the increasingly accessible technology for the production of weapons grade material pose challenging and complex dilemmas for humanity today and for generations as far into the future as we can possibly imagine.
2. The dangerous and toxic byproducts of nuclear weapons production will be with us forever, and in the immediate present we must cope with human health and environmental consequences which result from the release of these materials into the biosphere
The Hanford Timecapsule Project is an attempt to consider our nuclear situation from many different points of view. The timecapsule metaphor is used to help think about both the present and the far future in an objective way. What do we want to tell future generations about Hanford? What is it that is absolutely necessary we convey to our descendants for their own safety?
In late 1996, six friends came together, each working on projects which relate to Hanford in some way. Though all the projects together represent only a minuscule portion of viewpoints and information about Hanford, we decided to place information about these projects in a Timecapsule which would begin to tell future generations some of the complex history of the Hanford Site.
Each project or topic is fascinating in its own right. In their totality, they begin to give an impression of the complexity, the frustration, and the gravity of our nuclear legacy.
