A small plane based at the Pasco airport will fly over central Hanford to survey for slight increases in temperature. Thermal images will be collected to check for hot spots that could be caused by buried radioactive waste.
The data will be used to augment information collected two years ago with a helicopter equipped with sensors to measure levels of radiation and to help predict what type of radioactive contaminants might be present.
“It gives us a starting point of where to go look,” said Mike Cline, Department of Energy director for the Hanford nuclear reservation soil and groundwater division.
Work then will be done to determine the extent and type of waste that may have been buried in central Hanford from World War II through the Cold War, when Hanford was producing plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
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