Hanford Nuclear Waste Site

[Aggie]

Quoted from an email I recently received....

Columbia River: Hanford Nuclear Waste Tank is Leaking

A major issue has surfaced today that could impact a major salmon run and the Columbia River Watershed which the Okanagan is part of. Today the Governor of Washington State told the public that nuclear waste is leaking from the Hanford nuclear storage site in eastern Washington, south of the Okanagan Valley. This is a significant international incident because the Columbia River is within an international treaty that includes Canada, First Nations and the US. I'm requesting that you forward this email to as many people as possible. Currently, the tank is leaking in the range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers. Tom Carpenter of the Hanford watchdog group Hanford Challenge says, "We're out of time, obviously. These tanks are starting to fail now - we've got a problem. This is big."



The article below describes this situation, which has yet to capture the attention of governments in Canada. It's important that we all educate ourselves about Hanford, which represents one of the most seriously contaminated areas on Earth and one that's very close to the Okanagan and Kootenay.



Learn about Hanford:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site



Connect with Hanford Challenge a Watchdog Group:

http://www.hanfordchallenge.org/



Today's News:

Tank at Hanford nuclear storage site in Wash. is leaking but higher radiation not detected

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, February 15, 3:23 PM

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The long-delayed cleanup of the nation's most contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking.

The news raises concerns about the integrity of similar tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation and puts added pressure on the federal government to resolve construction problems with the plant being built to alleviate environmental and safety risks from the waste.

The tanks, which are already long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy said liquid levels are decreasing in one of 177 underground tanks at the site. Monitoring wells near the tank have not detected higher radiation levels, but Inslee said the leak could be in the range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers.

"I am alarmed about this on many levels," Inslee said at a news conference. "This raises concerns, not only about the existing leak ... but also concerning the integrity of the other single shell tanks of this age."

Inslee said the state was assured years ago that such problems had been dealt with and he warned that spending cuts — particularly due to a budget fight in Congress — would create further risks at Hanford. Inslee said the cleanup must be a priority for the federal government.

"We are willing to exercise our rights using the legal system at the appropriate time. That should be clear," Inslee said.

Inslee said the state has a good partner in Energy Secretary Steven Chu but that he's concerned about whether Congress is committed to clean up the highly contaminated site.

The tank in question contains about 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture of solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency. The tank, built in the 1940s, is known to have leaked in the past, but was stabilized in 1995 when all liquids that could be pumped out of it were removed.

Inslee said the tank is the first to have been documented to be losing liquids since all Hanford tanks were stabilized in 2005. His staff said the federal government is working to assess other tanks.

At the height of World War II, the federal government created Hanford in the remote sagebrush of eastern Washington as part of a hush-hush project to build the atomic bomb. The site ultimately produced plutonium for the world's first atomic blast and for one of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, effectively ending the war.

Plutonium production continued there through the Cold War. Today, Hanford is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup will cost billions of dollars and last decades.

Central to that cleanup is the removal of millions of gallons of a highly toxic, radioactive stew — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — from 177 aging, underground tanks. Many of those tanks have leaked over time — an estimated 1 million gallons of waste — threatening the groundwater and the neighboring Columbia River, the largest waterway in the Pacific Northwest.

Twenty- eight of those tanks have double walls, allowing the Energy Department to pump waste from leaking single-shell tanks into them. However, there is very little space left in those double-shell tanks today.

In addition, construction of a $12.3 billion plant to convert the waste to a safe, stable form is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Technical problems have slowed the project, and several workers have filed lawsuits in recent months, claiming they were retaliated against for raising concerns about the plant's design and safety.

"We're out of time, obviously. These tanks are starting to fail now," said Tom Carpenter of the Hanford watchdog group Hanford Challenge. "We've got a problem. This is big."

Inslee said he would be traveling to Washington D.C. next week to discuss the problem further.

[Sibling DavidH]

OMFSM!

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Wait, are you telling me that the major media conglomerates aren't saying a word about this? How can we believe this is happening if major corporations don't tell us that it's happening? 

[Griffin NoName]

Well, Asssociated Press are reporting it, though I do take any news I receive in emails with a pinch of salt.

[Aggie]

The friend who sent it to me is a bit of an environmental activist, although (IMHO) a well-balanced and well-informed one (EDIT: He likely wrote the original email; this wasn't just a pass-it-along yet). I'm glad to see some mention of monitoring networks being in place, but the fact that this stuff has been sitting there since the '40s in single-wall underground tanks is very, very bad.  I've worked at petroleum sites with similar tanks and they are inevitably a big mess.

This type of tank is no longer acceptable for storing petrol, let alone nuclear waste.  The cleanup will be hugely expensive, so this looks like a clear case of the US government not wanting to buck up the money this year.... _{or next year....  or next year....  or next year....  or next year....}  

In reality, the longer they leave it, the more it's going to migrate and the bigger the mess will be.

[Griffin NoName]

Tangentially. Activism is quite interesting. While focusing on one issue, there is the danger to miss all others. And yet, it can take activism to make changes. I have myself the issue of ME/CFS as biomedical as opposed to psychogenic; I sometimes wonder whether I reject the psychogenic out of hand due to they way it is applied rather than due to non-validity.

[pieces o nine]

Thanks for posting, Aggie; I hadn't heard about this, either. Something to watch!

[Opsa]

This is very disturbing news. 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

*sigh*

One of the unforeseen consequences of living in a nuclear age, where the most common "solution" is to push-forward problems to the next generation...

... once, a while back, the US had seemed to finally settled this, and had the wherewithal to properly deal with the White Elephant of spent nuclear fuel rods.   Several billions of $$ were spent on a possible deep-rock storage site, that promised reasonable safety with regards to ground water (the site used sufficiently deep wells that were well below any local water tables).  

Alas, greed and too much "not in my backyard you don't" has pretty much squelched that project for the time being.

The consequences of that?  Is that local storage of spent rods continues unresolved-- using facilities that were literally designed to be a 1 or 2 year at most storage (allowing the rods to cool temperature wise, to be safe to transport to permanent storage).   None of these local pools is designed for long-term, unmaintained use.  They were specifically designed as temparary storage, such that you'd occasionally drain them, do the needed maintenance without worry of personal being contaminated, then re-fill once re-certified as safe.

Keeping them in continuous use was never within the original design protocols-- so it's hardly surprising we are seeing them begin to fail like this.

... meh.

I really hate the short-sightedness of politicians....  I really do.