Atomic Harvest

Journalist D'Antonio tells of some of the people and politics involved in the cover-up, and now the clean-up, at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. He writes compellingly but should certainly have included some documentation and references. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Built in WW II to supply plutonium for the Manhattan Project, the federal nuclear installation in rural Hanford, Wash., is now undergoing a cleanup of more than 440 billion gallons of chemical and radioactive waste that is expected to cost some $1 billion a year for the indefinite future. No less staggering is Pulitzer Prize-winning News day reporter D'Antonio's sobering report on the "four decades of pollution, secrecy and deceit" at the nine-reactor, 570-square-mile site, whose officials allegedly put production needs over the safety of local populations. Focusing on several tireless activists, whistle-blowers and journalists, the author reveals how radiation-related health problems among animals and people prompted disclosures of plant mishaps and safety violations and how Hanford authorities deliberately failed to issue warnings when radioactive releases threatened public safety and the environment. The story has been covered in national media, but D'Antonio puts it into the context of the Cold War and such deceptions as the "missile gap" of the early '60s which defense secretary Robert McNamara later admitted was fabricated. The irony is that the local economy, once robust because of plutonium production, is booming again as the Hanford complex becomes a pioneer in developing the nuclear-waste cleanup technology needed here and in the former Soviet Union.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Downwind might be great for hunting, says Pulitzer-winning journalist D'Antonio (Heaven On Earth, 1991, etc.), but it's definitely not the place to be if you happen to live near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. In 1942, the US government chose a sere plain in eastern Washington to locate its principal nuclear-experimentation facility. Once the feds had secured the land from its residents (a nasty enough story in its own right, as D'Antonio makes clear), the scientists at Hanford managed, in less than two years, to put together the first atomic bomb. Shrouded in secrecy and exempt from outside monitoring, Hanford went its plutonium-enriching way with the advent of the cold war. But with a soaring cancer rate, infant mortality on a mean upswing, and the appearance of deformed sheep, a small number of locals demanded an accounting. Though stonewalled by the government and menaced by strangers, they kept digging, and it's their story that D'Antonio handles in thrilling fashion: how they secured secret documents, convinced the wary to speak out, and subverted the system from within (one of the principals was an inspector at the facility), all while under the watchful eye of the military establishment. What these citizens exposed was appalling: huge pools containing highly radioactive sludge; poisoned soil; vast airborne emissions of toxic gases (``in 1959, Hanford had released more radioactive iodine during every day of operation than the Three Mile Island accident had in total'')--and many of those living downwind will end up paying the highest price. Even in the notorious company of Love Canal, Three Mile Island, and Savannah River, Hanford can lay claim to the ugliest legacy of all--and D'Antonio chronicles it with such force that his pages fairly buzz with his outrage. (Eight-page b&w photo insert- -not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This gripping account of geopolitics and egotistical scientists pits eastern Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation--at which plutonium was brought to weapons-grade purity with "catastrophic environmental effects" in "a war in which the missiles never flew but did their deadly work on home ground"--against the "downwinders," local citizens pressing for public accounting from the nuclear industry. We meet pronuclear farmer Tom Bailie, sterile and ill, who suffered a mysterious paralysis as a child and remembers men taking Geiger counter readings from his father's farm; the outspoken Rev. Harper Houff of Spokane's Unitarian church; idealistic newspaper reporter Karen Dorn Steele; aged farmer Nels Allison, who recalls the birth of "the little demons"--lambs born deformed, perhaps a result of Hanford's toxic radioactivity--and having "to reach inside the ewes' wombs and break the fetuses into pieces in order to pull them out." Gruesomely compelling. Whitney Scott

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington helped develop the atomic bomb in the 1940s. For 30 years after its construction, according to D'Antonio, Hanford spewed enough dangerous radiation to cause thyroid diseases, miscarriages, and cancer. D'Antonio relates the sad tale of a government so obsessed with secrecy that it withheld vital information from the people it poisoned. Although the book is well written, the absence of notes or a bibliography is a fatal flaw. Whole conversations are re-created that are said to have taken place years before D'Antonio became aware of the Hanford victims, yet not one source is documented. The outrageous and duplicitous actions of the U.S government regarding Hanford deserve airing and a serious treatment. Unfortunately, this book is not up to providing it.
- Randy Dykhuis, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.