Hunter’s Point Shipyard (HPS) is located along the San Francisco Bay in southeastern San Francisco, California. Maritime activities at Hunters Point started in the nineteenth century when the first drydock was built in 1868. In 1903 a second drydock was built and operated by Bethlehem Steel Company. The United States Navy purchased Hunters Point in 1939 and took over full operations in 1941. Significant construction began in 1941 after American entry into World War II. At this time the Navy began excavation of the hills surrounding the shipyard, using the resulting spoils to expand the shoreline into the bay. Expanding the size of the shipyard by filling the bay with soil, waste, and debris continued through the 1970s.
Hunters Point Shipyard’s primary mission was the repair and maintenance of ships and submarines. However, another function of HPS was the loading of components of the atomic weapon “Little Boy” that was eventually used on Hiroshima. “Little Boy” was loaded on the USS Indianapolis on July 15th, 1945, and is reported to have contained half of the uranium-235 (U-235) available in the United States, valued at the time at $300 million ($4 trillion in 2018). The USS Indianapolis left HPS at 6:30 am on July 16th, 1945, but was not allowed to leave San Francisco’s harbor until 8:30 am, after the first atomic weapon test “Trinity” (5:29 am) had been confirmed successful in the New Mexico desert.
After the 1946 atomic tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific (Operation Crossroads), contaminated target and support ships were brought to Hunters Point for decontamination and study. In response to the new need to understand radiological issues, the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) was established in 1948 at Hunters Point and operated until 1969. HPS was decommissioned in 1974. In 1976, the Navy leased the site to Triple A Machine Shop. Triple A Machine Shop was ultimately indicted and convicted for illegal disposal of hazardous substances at Hunters Point. In 1986, Triple A Machine Shop’s 10-year lease expired and was not renewed. From 1986 and 1990, the Navy once again used Hunters Point to repair several naval vessels. In 1991, HPS was placed on the Navy’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) list and its mission as a Navy shipyard ended on April 1, 1994.
After the closure of the shipyard many of the facilities were leased to artists, small businesses, a railroad museum, and the San Francisco Police Department. The Navy informed tenants their leases would be terminated in 2005 because the storm and sanitary sewer systems required removal and investigation for radiological contamination.
The Environmental Restoration Program at HPS began in 1984 with the completion of an initial assessment that identified numerous contaminated areas. This included the oil reclamation ponds; industrial landfill; bay fill area; battery and electroplating shop; tank farm; pickling and plate yard; scrap yard; an old transformer storage yard; submarine base area; and bay sediment area. HPS was listed on the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) in 1989. In 1992 the Navy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 9, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board entered into a Federal Facilities Agreement. The agreement establishes a procedural framework and schedule for the remediation of Hunters Point Shipyard.
Buildings without foundations will inevitably come down.
I can be fooled, but my kids won’t be…
either we will correct what’s wrong,
it will be corrected for us.
James Baldwin, Take This Hammer
The area of Hunters Point Shipyard where the 500 series buildings were located is of significance because the original RADLAB/NRDL facilities were located here. Of note is an anecdotal indication of a spill of Sr-90 (Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission, with a half-life of 28.8 years).
A seven-story flat-roofed steel and concrete structure built in the early 1950s as the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory’s (NRDL) main research facility and headquarters. NRDL occupied the building from 1955 through its closure in 1969.
The entire building is classified as a restricted area.
Each floor of the facility was occupied as follows:
Basement: Various support facilities
First Floor: Lobby, guard office, building equipment rooms, storage rooms, and laboratories
Second Floor: Health Physics Division, instrument repair, maintenance, and calibration facilities
Third Floor: Administration
Fourth Floor: Nucleonics Division laboratories and offices
Fifth Floor: Laboratories and animal quarters and offices of the Biological and Medical (Bio-Med) Sciences Division
Sixth Floor: Chemical Technology Division laboratory facilities
Seventh Floor (only floor with windows): Cafeteria and auditorium
A Bay Fill Area used for disposal of assorted shipyard wastes, which included Ra-226 and Sr-90 devices. The site was potentially used for disposal of wastes from decontamination of Operation Crossroads.
Building 704 (on the right), a metal-sheathed shop building, stands as a marker for an area designated as a “Radioactive Material Storage” area on a 1949 map. This storage area was just south of the building and adjacent to animal pens/kennels. In the background, Sutro Tower.
Building 521 was a power plant constructed of concrete and measures approximately 7,040 square feet at its foundation. This is one of two suspected sites of fuel oil burning from three Operation Crossroads target ships.
Building 351 (on the left) is a World War II-era reinforced concrete shop building constructed in 1945 and enlarged at a later date. The core building is three stories, with a flat roof and a five-story tower at the northwest corner. The site was used for the electronics work area/shop, optical laboratories, NRDL Materials and Accounts Division, NRDL Technical Information Division, BUMED storeroom, NRDL Office Services Branch, NRDL Thermal Branch, machine shop (on the first floor), NRDL Engineering Division, and NRDL library.
Building 411 (center) is a large curtain-walled, steel-framed building with a flat roof, located in the southern waterfront area. This building includes a saw-toothed series of rooftop monitors as well as bands of steel industrial sash and large glazed industrial doors. The building has two levels, with a taller segment to the north. The building held source storage, a civilian cafeteria, a radiography shop, shipfitters, and a boilermakers shop, as well as a ship repair shop.
Building 366 (on the right) is a large corrugated metal, gable-roofed Butler-type structure, measuring approximately 280 feet by 130 feet. The building was used for NRDL instrument calibration; administrative offices; Applied Research and Technical Development Branches; Radiological Safety Branch; Management Planning Division; Nucleonics Division; Instruments Evaluation Section; general laboratories; Chemical Research Laboratory; shipyard radiography shop; Boat/Plastic Shop; other military/Navy Branch Project Officers Station; and NRDL Management Engineering and Comptroller Department. Later the building was used by 29 artists from The Point Artists’ colony.
Building A is a one-story brick building shaped as a rectangle with a rounded eastern end resembling an apse. The building situated north of Drydock 3 (used for Operation Crossroads ship decontamination), about midway along the drydock, measures about 96 by 56 feet. A channel for water from Drydock 3 passes in a straight line north from the drydock through the pumphouse to the Bay .
Building 253, is a six-story concrete-framed, glass curtain-walled structure, built between 1944 and 1947. The building has a large gantry for the craning of equipment to the upper stories and a periscope tower extending vertically from the roof. Building 253, attached to Building 211, contained Machinery and Electrical Test/Repair Shop, and Contractor LLRW Storage. Activities within the building include radiography and instrument calibration through 1974; a Gauge Shop (and probable location of radium paint activities); Electronics, Optical, and Ordnance Shops; Weapons Shop; Electrical Shop; and storage of equipment from Operation Crossroads ships.
Building 214 (on the left) is of typical wooden World War II-era administration building design, built from standardized Bureau of Yards and Docks plans. The building housed the Combat Weapons Systems Office, administrative offices, Accounting and Bond Office, and NRDL Health Physics counting room.
Building 205. a single-story L-shaped brick building, measures 211 by 61 feet. Two WW II-era additions were made to the rear of the original building. The building houses the pumping machinery for Drydock 2 (used for Operation Crossroads ship decontamination). In the background is Building 231 the Inside Machinists Shop and Ship Repair Shop for the shipyard.
The Gun Mole Pier is a large flat area also known as the re-gunning pier. A large 450-ton gantry crane originally used to remove gun turrets from ships marks the pier’s major feature. On this site NRDL conducted a Radioactive pavement decontamination study, decontamination studies on NRDL Experimental Barges as well as on a contaminated B-17 aircraft. The ex-USS Independence, a WWII Aircraft carrier and one of the six target ships towed to Hunters Point Shipyard berthed at the Gun Mole Pier upon her return from atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, and the site became a loading point for radioactive wastes.
Statement from United State Nuclear Regulatory Commission
See also the scholarly work on the site and surrounding community by Lindsey Dillon