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:
- Hanford.govIncludes area overviews, description of current and completed activities, an event calendar, official documents, and a wealth of additional information related to the Hanford Site and its cleanup activities
- Tri-Party AgreementThe U. S. Department of Energy, which operates the Hanford Site in South Central Washington State, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Washington Department of Ecology signed a comprehensive cleanup and compliance agreement on May 15, 1989. The Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order, or Tri-Party Agreement, is an agreement for achieving compliance with the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) remedial action provisions and with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) treatment, storage, and disposal unit regulations and corrective action provisions. More specifically, the Tri-Party Agreement 1) defines and ranks CERCLA and RCRA cleanup commitments, 2) establishes responsibilities, 3) provides a basis for budgeting, and 4) reflects a concerted goal of achieving full regulatory compliance and remediation, with enforceable milestones in an aggressive manner.
- Administrative Record (AR) and Public Information Repository (PIR):Provides access to the full text of official records and other publicly accessible documents.
- DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Public Reading RoomThe collection includes technical reports, administrative materials, factsheets, and handouts. The catalog is searchable via the Internet. The DDRS database has been incorporated into the Reading Room catalog All items in the collection are for use in the Reading Room only. If extra copies are available they are distributed free, and photocopying is available for a charge. Requests by phone, fax, mail or email are welcome, as well as in person. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires certain kinds of documents be made available to the public for inspection and copying. To access those materials related to DOE-RL and DOE-ORP, please see the Electronic FOIA Reading Room for the Hanford Site. The Public Reading Room is operated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy
- Washington State Department of Ecology Nuclear Waste ProgramOur Nuclear Waste Program oversees cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington. The site produced plutonium for military defense between 1943 and 1989, and later served as a storage facility for other radioactive wastes. Today, Hanford is one of the most complex and toxic cleanup sites in the nation. Our role is to regulate cleanup efforts. We also regulate several other mixed waste (which includes both dangerous and radioactive waste) sites in Washington and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Learn what we're doing to keep dangerous and radioactive cleanup on track, and communities and the environment safe.
Hanford Information Line: 1-800-321-2008 or email: hanford@ecy.wa.gov
Finding Aids
- Filing Cabinet Finding AidThese 360 print files include government reports, published research studies, and Environmental Impact Statements (draft and final). Files are in cabinets in the Hanford Room, 4th floor. Please contact staff for access.
- Microfilm Author IndexAuthor Index to Hanford microfilm collection. Currently only exists as scan of handwritten records, and is not currently an OCR file. Please contact staff for assistance.
- List of Print Volumes in Hanford CollectionList of print / bound volumes in the Hanford Collection. These are held in the 4th floor Hanford room - please contact staff for access. 2022 Note: Due to recent shifting, the locations are no longer accurate, though the volumes are still in the collection. Please also note that some of these items do not appear in the Library Catalog.
Hanford Bibliographies
- Hanford: Issues and InformationA guide to special library collections in the Pacific Northwest, compiled by Gretta Siegel
- Hanford: Issues and InformationA Select Bibliography compiled by Mary O'Brien et al.
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.