The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project was completed in August 1998 and resulted in the book Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 edited by Stephen I. Schwartz. These project pages should be considered historical.
This photograph shows eleven high-level waste tanks under construction at the Hanford Reservation circa 1943. Once completed, these tanks, built of reinforced concrete and carbon steel, were buried underground. Workers on the tank at right show the scale. Of the sixteen tanks built at Hanford during the Manhattan Project, twelve were 75 feet (22.9 meters) in diameter. Intended only as an interim measure, they began to leak within only a few years of being completed and remain in existence today.
Credit: Department of Energy