Hanford’s atomic legacy

Curator’s note:

This image by Emmet Gowin was taken in 1986 of the area surrounding the Hanford nuclear site near Richland, Washington. The facility was decommissioned the following year — in 1987 — after having served military and civilian purposes for more than 30 years, including having enriched the plutonium for the Trinity test and Nagasaki atomic bomb.

Within a decade of being closed it was revealed that the local ecosystem — via the Columbia River — was continuing to evidence significant levels of radioactivity and toxicity.