In order to separate plutonium from fission products, the irradiated nuclear fuel must be "reprocessed". First it is dissolved in nitric acid, and then the plutonium is chemically separated out, leaving large volumes of a highly radioactive and corrosive liquid behind. These large tanks, designed to hold the post-reprocessing liquid wastes from the military reactors at Hanford, are intended to replace older tanks which have already leaked a million gallons into the soil. A single gallon of this liquid is enough to ruin an entire city's water supply.

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photo by Robert Del Tredici from his book entitled At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb (Harper and Row, 1987)

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