Government Information: Hanford Documents Collection

Location and Access

The entire Hanford Collection is currently stored in room 472 on the fourth floor.  
The content of this collection can be examined through the library catalog, and through the guide below.
For access, please contact library staff for assistance.

Brief Overview of the Collection

The follow text is from Prof. Michael Bowman's "The Trojan and Hanford collection at Portland State University," DocumentOR, 1993, Vol.13(3)

"The Collection contains materials formerly housed at the Multnomah County Library about the Trojan nuclear power plant. This includes: PGE's Applicant Correspondence File, hearings transcripts, the Operating License, leakage test reports, and safety reports. This is mostly older material. As a Local Public Document Room (LPDR), the Collection also contains all publicly available Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) documents from 1981 to the present on microfiche, including US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulation (NUREG) documents. The Library also houses a large collection of Atomic Energy Commission documents on microforms.

The Collection also contains materials on the Hanford clean-up effort. The material is deposited here by the Environmental Data Management Center (EDMC) at Hanford, as specified in the Tri-Party Agreement between the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology. The materials available include: reports on the current state of the site, explorations of clean-up methods of both nuclear and toxic waste sites, and draft and final clean-up plans. There is an index to the collection. There is also an index to all material (including internal memos) available from the EDMC. The collection also houses materials from the Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project. The Project is trying to determine the radiation dosage absorbed by area residents from Hanford emissions. "

Public Comment Documents

Since 1993, the Portland State Library has made available for public view the comment documents on the Hanford Site clean up efforts. Occasionally, other publicly and privately held organizations request comments from citizens whose lives will be affected by their activities. ­

As the Hanford Site continues its environmental cleanup, the public is invited to comment on proposed activities. Occasionally, other publicly- and privately-held organizations request comments from citizens whose lives will be affected by their activities.

  • Documents open for public review and comment can be found on the fourth floor by the map and Oregon documents collections.
  • Microfilm documents and miscellaneous papers related to this collection are located in room 472; staff must provide access to this room.

In addition to Hanford-related documents located throughout the Library’s government document and general collections, the Library maintains separate collections of items received through its role as a public information repository. Descriptions of these collections can be found in the Hanford Information Repository finding aids below.

Materials in this collection include:

  • DOE Spend Nuclear Fuel and INEL ER&WM EIS Project. Administrative Record Public Comments; Microfiche collection (1-1445)
  • US DOE Management of SNF from the K Basins; Microfiche collection (1-66)
  • Hanford Reference Microfiche. Includes commercial and governmental articles and reports related to the Hanford site and clean-up activities; Microfiche collection organized alphabetically by author (9 ca 2500 titles)
  • Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project (HEDR); Miscellaneous papers, technical reports, and project reports

Public comment documents also can be accessed and downloaded from the Hanford.gov and Washington Department of Ecology websites. More information is available at the following sites:

Finding Aids

Hanford Bibliographies

Uncatalogued Material

Unfortunately there are materials in the Hanford collection that are not reflected in the PSU Library Catalogue, so researchers are encouraged to consult the finding aids on this page. The collection also contains potentially uncatalogued materials in various outdated media formats, includes cassette taps, VHS tapes, 3.5 disks, and CD-ROMs. These materials are stored in a cabinet in the Hanford room; to view these materials, please contact library staff for assistance.