- Welcome to The Newsfeed.

This week we're taking you to the Hanford nuclear site in central Washington.

Between 1944 and 1987, it made about two thirds of the plutonium for the country's nuclear arsenal.

Reporter Lizz Giordano looks at the dangers workers faced back then, and the ones they still face today as the site gets cleaned up.

- Last year, cleanup at the former nuclear site near the Tri-Cities hit a big milestone.

Workers started turning radioactive sludge, sloshing around in tanks, into glass for permanent storage.

Forty years after production stopped, the Department of Energy finally had started treating the waste left behind.

- Finally, from the first time plutonium was processed there, we're finally treating waste.

And yes, we have a long way to go, but we're now on the path, and we're proving that it can be done.

The cleanup work being done by the DOE is overseen by the Washington Department of Ecology and the EPA.

And the waste itself is a messy mix of dangerous chemicals, leftovers from the race to build an atomic bomb.

About 56 million gallons in 176 tanks at Hanford need to be cleaned up.

That is expected to last until at least 2086.

That means workers here will be handling this waste and working near it for decades to come.

Washington state, and that community in particular, has paid a high price, you know, for many decades now and will continue to pay a high price for many decades.

Workers out there change the course of history, and we owe it to them and their families and everyone else to to make sure we complete the mission now with cleaning up the site.

I'm Lizz Giordano.

Cascade PBS.

- Next time, you'll learn what one doctor saw treating Hanford workers exposed to toxic chemicals.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed.