39. Bridging the Gap of Nuclear: History of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard

Haakon ("Hoken") Williams is the Deputy Director of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear policy organization that works to improve protections from nuclear risks and assists communities near nuclear facilities and contaminated sites. Haakon has worked with Committee to Bridge the Gap since 2018, including helping produce a series of technical reports on the cleanup of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard that received coverage from the San Francisco Chronicle and NBC Bay Area.

The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was a United States Navy shipyard in San Francisco, California (USA), located on 638 acres (258 ha) of waterfront at Hunters Point in the southeast corner of the city. The U.S. Navy acquired the site in 1940 and they built, repaired, and did maintenance of ships for the U.S. during World War II.

Later, the U.S. Navy established the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) in 1946 at HPS to study the effects of and to develop counter measures from nuclear weapons. NRDL operated until 1969 and conducted studies related to ship shielding, radioactive waste for deep-sea disposal, animal research, radiation detection instrumentation development, and other laboratory studies. NRDL also decontaminated and disposed of some ships involved in nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands.

The site currently consists of approximately 866 acres, 446 of which are under water. The base was named redundant as part of the Base Realignment and Closure effort in 1991, and was closed permanently in 1994. Since then the site has been part of a superfund cleanup effort to remediate the leftovers of decades of industrial and radiological use. Parcels have been sold off as they were cleaned up, mostly for condominium development.

With Haakon we discuss the history not many people know about, with the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, the effort to try to clean it up, and what they want to do with the area now.

Contact and connect with Haakon: [email protected]

Committee to Bridge the Gap: https://www.committeetobridgethegap.org

More on HPNS: https://www.committeetobridgethegap.org/category/hunters-point/

https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/complex/hunters-point-naval-shipyard.html

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco-hunters-point-contamination-cleanup-development/175231/

TetraTech Scandal: https://www.courthousenews.com/developer-sues-tetra-tech-and-feds-over-hunters-point-project/ https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/U-S-sues-Tetra-Tech-over-Hunters-Point-shipyard-13536013.php