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U.S. Nuclear Cleanup Carries Major Risks
Roland Piquepaille writes "New Scientist reports in this pretty alarming article that there is a 50-50 chance of a major radiation or chemical accident during the cleanup of the dirtiest nuclear site in the U.S. There are indeed lots of things to clean at the Hanford complex in Washington state: 67 tons of plutonium and 190 million liters of liquid radioactive waste stored in underground tanks. A third of them, dating from the Cold War, have already leaked 4 million liters in the environment, contaminating the groundwater and a river. Meanwhile, officials at the DOE, who'll spend $50 billion between now and 2035 on this cleanup, seem less worried than the different specialists interviewed by New Scientist. Please read this overview for selected quotes from the article and from the Hanford site. You'll also find a slide from the DOE showing the timeframe for the cleanup."
I'm pretty sure it has caused more health problems in the U.S. than nuclear power has.
When you compare nuclear to oil, where we have to deal with unstable people in an unstable region of the world, it is somewhat safe. Is it perfect? No, but what energy source is? Yes, some are safer/cleaner, but right now, they're also more expensive/more difficult to deploy/etc
I thought that Russia was going to make it their problem? Russia wants to allow the imports of nuclear waste into their country. I can't find it now but I thought that even though world-wide organizations are denouncing this thought the US was happy to ship some over there for permanent storage.
So what happens if this stuff does leak out? Would that be considered a Superfund site? Funding for ecological disaster recovery was slashed by the current administration.
Our world looks better and better ever day.
Not an original idea, I grant you, but I always thought it'd be neat to be able to take this nasty stuff and launch it into the sun. That'd clean up pretty well then, I think.
But what would be the problem with doing so? Is it a matter of dangers of rocket failure (e.g. huge atmospheric dirty-bomb), or is it also quantity of waste to be disposed of and the cost?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
I've got to start reading the submitter's name more often. Every time I click through on a story Roland's submitted, I feel I've been duped. You're welcome, RP.
Is there any way I can configure my slash options to ignore his stories altogether?
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
I do not usually comment but I would like to remind everyone that the river mentioned would be the Columbia River since Hanford is within sight of the river and a large number of fish spawn there every year.
...was the lifetime production of the facility, not material to be cleaned up as implied.
There are indeed lots of things to clean at the Hanford complex in Washington state: 67 tons of plutonium
Actually, from the article, the 67 tons of Plutonium were the product of the Handford site, not a side-effect left littering the place.
Note, before anyone starts whining about nuclear power not being clean, that Hanford isn't about nuclear power, but about nuclear weapons.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
personally, I think we should be reprocessing the waste into safer materials so that we can move them or reuse them.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The river is the Columbia River, an important transportation and power supply for the region.
I live downstream. Would you like to shake any of my three hands?
Look here For a video covering the decommisioning of a small experimental Oxford reactor. Very Very scary (especially pushing graphite blocks into a shredder with no more protection than blue gloves!
Philip
Signatures are broken
Bet the Hotels in that area are pretty cheap!
Plus glow in the dark showers!!
Book me now!
Considering the fact that the material has to be moved, every consideration must be made to properly secure the material from accidents and theft.
DOE is more than capable of doing this and have done so for many years. Admittedly there have been a few problems but it never started a real situation of calamatious proportions.
I almost signed up to work for DOE in this team capacity after i got out of the Army as a RANGER and i was very impressed with the security, armament and professionalism these folks have at hand. I just did not like the hours.
+++Warning to any fool that thinks it's easy to steal radioactive material from one of these teams. You'll die twice before you get to pull your trigger once!+++
Cyberzephyr
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
there is a 50-50 chance of a major radiation or chemical accident during the cleanup of the dirtiest nuclear site in the U.S.
And a 100% chance of a major radiation or chemical accident if they don't. So this really looks to be a non-issue.
Learn to love Alaska
I was interviewed for 3 different jobs doing cleanup at Hanford around 10 years ago. Sort of glad I didn't take any. Talk about a thankless dirty job (we would have been using remote methods, but still). Anyway, two points: a) pollution from nuclear is comparable to pollution from other energy sources. Lead, polonium, mercury, etc just get spread thinner with other methods. Nuclear keeps it concentrated. Call it "choose your poison." Even windmills have been implicated in killing endanged animals (thwack!). b) 60+ tons of plutonium seems a bit high. Not impossible, but a bit high. Given how highly it is sought, you'd think it would have been extracted.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
So, is this all coming from plants that were producing weapons-grade material?
What I'm getting at is, how much of this waste is comparable (in terms of which specific materials, and in what volumes) to what a nuclear powerplant would produce?
I'm not trying to diminish the magnitude of the mess or the impact it has on the area, but I can already see people taking this and running in the wrong direction with it - namely, that every nuclear power plant will produce this sort of mess over time. I *believe* this is the exception rather than the rule, because this site was/is producing weapons material rather than electricity, but it'd be great if someone with hard data could confirm/invalidate that...
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
... launch it into the sun.
But what would be the problem with doing so? Is it a matter of dangers of rocket failure (e.g. huge atmospheric dirty-bomb), or is it also quantity of waste to be disposed of and the cost?
Yes, and yes.
-kgj
-kgj
Hanford isn't a nuclear plant, it was a nuclear weapons research facility that also mass-produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Moreover, Hanford was one of the places where we found out about dangerous isotopes and how to handle them. It wasn't run properly and in fact hardly could have been. Not to say that there weren't huge screwups there, but comparing this to a well run nuclear power plant is just wrong.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Despite being toxic both chemically and because of its ionising radiation, plutonium is far from being 'the most toxic substance on earth' or so hazardous that 'a speck can kill'.
On both counts there are substances in daily use that, per unit of mass, have equal or greater chemical toxicity (arsenic, cyanide, caffeine) and radiotoxicity (smoke detectors).
more: http://www.uic.com.au/nip18.htm
I don't live anywhere near there.
is Im not!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Beware the FUD that comes from articles like this. Last night on 60 minutes they ran an article about the Nevada Yucca mountain site. Totally one sided and full of FUD. At one point they interviewed a guy who said there would be 300 foot long tractor trailer trucks "the length of a football field" hauling this through people's neighborhoods. Last I checked, tractor trailers are 80 feet long. Just lots of sloppy reporting without proper fact checking.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Guys, this is a site that has spent most of its existance producing chemicals,etc.. weapons. This is not a nuclear power plant site. Please read the article and stop modding people as informative for saying nuclear power isn't clean the article is not about nuclear power.
No, this is
I'll admit, I only know a little about the storage of nuclear waste, but can someone PLEASE explain how it could possibly be so difficult to keep the stuff from leaking?
It's not like these containers are sitting outside exposed to the elements. They're, AFAIK, stored underground in secure facilities.
People make it sound like the government spends millions of dollars to develop these high-tech facilities and then just haphazardly sprays the stuff into old, rusty oil-drums. Surely this isn't the case.... right...?
-Grym
This entire article is based on a study by one person, no doubt with a political agenda.
I've lived next to Hanford since I was 3 years old, and work a couple of miles from the nuke plant. I've toured the site many times. I've followed local news, which reports on every boring little detail since they have nothing better to do, my entire life.
Are there problems? Sure. I remember when the single walled tanks started leaking, and they pumped everything into new double-wall tanks. Will there be problems in the future? Sure. Will those problems affect me? No. The accidents that take place may be major to the people working on that particular project, but are not catastrophic in the grand scheme of things.
Look: The Hanford site has been operational for decades. The number of serious accidents is tiny, and said accidents have only affected the workers directly involved with that given project, not the rest of us. Yes, there are environmental concerns. No, they aren't as horrible as this article makes them out to be. We swim in and eat fish from the river. Our water comes from the river and local groundwater. None is contaminated enough to be detectible, let alone harm somebody. And I'm right here, a fraction of a mile downstream from the site.
Even if the clean-up goes according to plan, Boldt claims there will still be 260 square kilometres of groundwater exceeding drinking water safety limits for over 10,000 years.
He's full of himself. This is nothing more than paranoid scare tactics.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Friend of mine worked there for Bechtel for a number of years. After the foldup, he couldn't give his house away. Bad spot when you owe $50,000.00 on a hpouse now worth $0.50. Luckily, he had inherited the old home place, which he moved his family back into.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Not an original idea, I grant you, but I always thought it'd be neat to be able to take this nasty stuff and launch it into the sun.
No - let's bury it on the moon, and then when it all explodes - Space 1999, just a few years late!
Imagine how useful this sort of not-far-off technology would be in this situation? Send it to the sun for the cost of electricity. Just hope you REALLY didnt want any of that 'waste' cause theres no getting it back!
Will it be considered ironic when energy from nuclear plants is used to propel their own waste into space?
However, he doesn't say what he wants. Does he want to delay the process, and why does he think that will lead to a better risk management than the current plant? Has he got any suggestions for how the risks can be mitigated?
IMHO, Alvarez comes across as a person that does not want this cleanup to take place at all because that may lead to nuclear power not becoming mainstream if an accident occurs during the cleanup.
"who's for MORE deregulation? Anyone? Raise your hands..." Yes, all 8 of them!
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Weren't we telling the nuclear power industry
The contamination isn't from nuclear power. It's from producing nuclear weapons, and general experiments. You must remember, a large amount of our nation's nuclear research was done at Hanford, including the world's first man-made, sustained nuclear reaction. The mess is from this activity, conducted decades ago when we didn't know as much as we do now.
This has nothing to do with nuclear power generation.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Read some other comments. Hanford was producing nuclear weapons material, NOT power.
Who says this waste is from nuclear power plants? It could be leftovers from nuclear weapons/research.
Also, nuclear power plant technology has vastly improved since this particlar waste repository was first opened up.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Yeah, there's that, and the fact that a modern nuke plant produces less hard radioactive waste in a year than a coal-burning plant spews (even past modern scrubbers) into the air every year.
We need to stop grandfathering in old power plants of all types, step up, pay some of the up-front costs, and get some good power generation going.
For the NIMBY folks, I'll volunteer to host a PBR in my backyard.
Contrary to what a lot of places would have you believe, if we'd actually shell out some cash and stop only focusing on the very bottom line for hte first year, we've got affordable, safe, and clean nuke power available to us... and it's a shame we've not made use of it.
to grandparent poster: don't be sad you live in WA, I left 11 years ago now, and I go back every chance I get... it only goes downhill from there.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
The production schedule for the new Vitrification Plant is far ahead of the basic science and engineering that form the foundation for its construction. Although I do not think that they will operate it with the risks for steam explosion that the article alludes to, it is more likely that the tax payers will pay more than the estimated $7B to construct it.
You heard it right, folks - $7B.
As for the groundwater contamination, that is nothing new. A tritium plume extending from the 200 Areas (where plutonium separation was performed) to the Columbia River has been in place since production started. It has fluctuated in size according to the politics of weapons production. The facilities have been shut down since the early 90's and are in various stages of decommissioning.
The issue of iodine-129 is a sticky point. It has a long half-life and had been dumped to the soil column without too much worry about the transport properties of the nuclide. It travels at the same rate through the vadose and groundwater as nitrate. It is very mobile. The toxicity of the isotope is in come dispute. I can get a higher radiation dose from a urniary test than I can get from consuming contaminated Hanford groundwater. I can also dispose of the contamination through my municipal water treatment facility, a practice prohibited for Hanford contractors.
As for the cesium-137 and strontium-90, those isotopes bind to soils high in the vadose and rarely reach groundwater. The are confined to zones near the surface, far from the river, and will be left in place to decay to background beneath low permeability covers. This is not a practice that the USDOE is forcing on the local community, but is a treatment alternative that is accepted by the USEPA and Washington Deparment of Ecology.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
The Hanford facility was created for the purpose of nuclear research by the world's most diverse economy.
Will the Iran's or the North Korea's of the world do any better job of cleaning up the messes they are currently creating?
Certainly, enforcing economic sanctions cannot be an answer. Can anyone name a single time those have worked?
At some point in time we have to take those countries out of the nuclear mix, less San Francisco is the target of their wrath and becomes the next nuclear wasteland we have to clean up.
--Hanford isn't a nuclear plant, it was a nuclear weapons research facility that also mass-produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.--
Uh, making Plutonium requires a reactor, therfore it's a plant.
FWIW,
Putonium is one of the most dangerous elements there is. One tenth of a microgram is enough to cause bone cancer. It's a wonder we are not all dead from this as Hanford dates right straight back to the Manhattan Project and they didn't know what they were doing back then.
Presumably you are on the West side of the state, in which case the large mountain chain and prevailing winds should keep you reasonably safe (if the moss/mutant banana slugs don't get you first).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I live right next to the Idaho National Engineering lab. (INEL) we have 53 reacotrs out there, among them were the first to produce electric power, and the first breeder (plutonium producing) reactor. There is also one other interesting piece of tech out there- a calciner. This calciner takes liquid waste and makes it a solid. Litle balls about the size of cookie sprinkles. The stuff is still radioactive (no fix for that) BUT it can no longer seep inot groundwater, it no longer eats away at its container, it is much more stable with regard to the environment. Hanford has to know about this and I imagine they didn't do it because it would be a major pain to get the stuff here to calcine it, or it was expensive. (Most likly both transporting "hot" nuclear materials is probably the biggest paperwork nightmare I can imagine. one last point- the people who work there don;t want to die anymore than you do. These people know what they are doing- (but managment is the one that makes the papers.) And even if their managment tells them to do something stupid- the guy on the ground wants to go home to his family tonight. I serously doubt there will be a problem- I have lived here my whole life without problem, and plan to stay.
Soooo: we clean it up fast: dangerous, chance of accident.
We clean it up slow: Containers leak.
We never do nuclear again: Gas at european prices.
We just sit in the dark: Yeah you can be a left wing wacko too.
If we never did it, we could all be speaking russian right now.
67 tons of plutonium makes a lot of deterrence.
Just drop all the crap on the Afgan/Pakistan border and we can shoot the terrorists in the dark.
Wouldn't that be cool?
Is anyone else having problems with google?
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
I'm not defending Bush. All I am saying is, Reader Beware. You see a Slashdot blurb or a headline somewhere saying "Nuclear this and that! We'll probably cause a meltdown, 50/50! We're lighting our own WMDs!" What many of us may not realize is essential to consider is who came up with these numbers, upon what data is this guy basing his numbers which magically add up to an even 50 50? What political agenda might that guy have, considering that he was Clinton's go-to guy on the environment? Oh, he now is a top guy of some official-sounding "Institute for Policy Studies" in Washington DC? Did he get there because he's a green genius or maybe some strings were pulled for him by people who want some favors returned? Any word from him of the risks of not doing this clean-up?
You get the idea. Yeah, most of us saw Fahrenheit and know Bush is an evil liar; but please people, keep your Bullshit Detector on stand-by when getting politicked by either parties.
Radioactive materials are sometimes called "hot"; they can be warm to the touch; this comes from the fact that as decay occurs particles come shooting out of the nucleus. These particles can hit other nuclei and jostle molecules around.
IIRC, the most recent containment technology is based on storing the "waste" in crystals, eg Zircon. The upswing of crystal storage is that the "hot" material in the center of the crystal degrades the inner part of the crystal, which reacts by forming a "wall" instead of cracking or oozing. Kind of like when you crumple a piece of paper, and there's a limit to how much smaller you can make it by squeezing. Okay, maybe that's a poor analogy, since the "squeezing" comes from the inside, but you get the idea.
Here's a link.
FWIW, if we had a space elevator, would anyone object to putting nuclear plants on it? It's not in anyone's backyard, and it's well placed to sling the crud into space... if we can find a target. I say Mercury.
Nuclear is one option we should pursue. We should also keep working on bio-fuelcells and wind/wave. It all comes from the sun (well, A sun...) anyway. This is all going to be moot once we bootstrap a stellar economy.. there's more methane and natural gas to be had than well, even humans could waste (okay, maybe not, but there's a lot).
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Overview of Handford radioactive pollution issues
Summarizing...
From 1944-1972, Hanford released 740 kcuries of iodine-131, 200 kcuries of tritium, 19 Mcuries of krypton-85, 420 Mcuries of xenon-133, and many other radionuclides into the air, most during non-filtered or periods of early filters from 1944-1950. The biggest health risk is probably the iodine-131, rather than the noble gasses xenon and krypton. The iodine exposure was from contaminated milk, eating contaminated fruits and vegetables, and breathing contaminated air. Iodine is bio-concentrated in the thyroid gland, which can lead to tumors there.
Tritium was released mainly in 1949 through 1954. Also early on, a lot of particles of ruthenium radionuclides and plutonium were released.
Releases from cooling water and flushes of the reactors at Hanford (for creating plutonium for weapons) lead to water-borne exposure from zinc-65, arsenic-76, phosphorus-32, sodium-24 and neptunium-239. Eating fish and shellfish was the main way people were exposed to radiation from Hanford's reactors.
60 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from the chemical separations plants are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford. The tanks contain about 200 million curies of radioactivity. Over the years, more than 1 million gallons, containing over 100 kcuries of radioactivity, have leaked into the soil. At present, it is uncertain whether any of this waste has reached the groundwater.
Tritium is the most commonly found radionuclide in the groundwater at Hanford. Ruthenium-106, technetium-99 and iodine-129 are three of the other radioactive materials commonly found in Hanford's groundwater.
The separations plants required large amounts of water to process plutonium and this water became contaminated inside the plants. Hanford has estimated that over 440 billion gallons of these radioactive wastes were dumped into the ground.
Hanford also buried solid wastes in the soil. This waste contains nearly 5 million curies of radioactivity.
A couple of years back SciAm had some articles about this by (Gary Stix?), and they made me jump. I don't jump easily. But at least one nuclear technician explained that "we don't know how hot X is because we don't have machines that can measure it". Gulp. I've no phobia of "radioactivity" (I have a science background) but wait a minute - if it's so damn hot you can't measure it? ...
Tom Lehrer might be right after all. Perhaps theres a nice green Campusy place around Seattle
which would make a great repository...
One day, this will be our best energy source - oh like in 6 monthes or so given U.S/China fuel consumption...
What exactly is a "Troll", now, on Slashdot? The parent post points out that Americans, including the people in Hanford, were told lies about the safety of the plant for decades. It gets a "Troll" mod, but no replies contradicting it. How appropriate for a story about silent complicity in nuclear pollution.
--
make install -not war
We're being pedantic here - when we think nuclear plant we think 'nuclear power plant' which is what Hanford assuredly is not.
Agreed on the other bit, that was what I was expressing not so succinctly in the grandparent.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The contaminated river in question is the Columbia. As the second-largest river (by flow) in the lower 48, and the largest to drain into the eastern Pacific ocean, I think it merits a mention by name.
But then I'm a local, so I'm biased.
Thankfully, the large flow means that the contamination is pretty dilute. The bad news, of course, is that said contamination flows through quite a few populated areas (including Portland), the river is used to irrigate and transport zillions of tons of wheat and other edibles, and lots of fish get pulled from the river and eaten.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
If U.S. scientists could harness the power of the atom, why couldn't they figure out that underground tanks LEAK?
Actually, there was never any claim that this type of nuclear power was safe. It would have been utterly useless if it was.
The actual claim for this nuclear power was that if it was working correctly, it could vaporize millions of people in a split second, and completely level cities 10 miles wide. In fact, the most extreme claims for this type of technology were that it could possibly block out the sun for years and completely destroy all life on Earth. Because of this promise of absolute and complete UN-safety, the products of Hanford were bought. Thousands of them.
So if you say that everyone was saying that this nuclear power was safe, you might want to go back and check the facts.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
and not clean it up!
pound for pound, a coal power plant makes vastly more radio active waste.
Rad for Rad a nuclear plant makes more.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
You're not understanding what I've written. I consume ORALLY a larger dose of iodine-129 to have a lower urinary tract radiogram performed than I would receive from drinkning Hanford groundwater.
And they do not give you a iodine tablet before the radiogram.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Let's Ask Google Calculator. Oh. 50m gallons is 190m litres.
John.
Like 99.9% of humanity, they read headlines to find things that fit their ideological filters and preconceived notions.
--- Ban humanity.
Anti Nuke groups actually love this situation because it insures to keep the crisis mounting, and discourages any future nuclear development. Then if and when a nuclear waste incident occurs they can point and say "I told you so."
Why not go for better storage now, and keep looking for storage/disposal/reprocessing solutions to use later?
Letter To Iran
The natural thorium and uranium in coal is about 6 orders of magnitude less potent than fission waste.
...if the reactors in question were nuclear plants, then so was the small research reactor at the Univ. of Washington.
The link in one of the parents was trying to relate the activities at Hanford (creation of nuclear materials for weapons and research) vs those of a commercial power-generating nuclear reactor.
The parent article to yours was dismissing this link, and then you try to casually deconstruct it and say, essentially, that any nuclear reactor is a nuclear plant.
FWIW, Cobalt-60 is probably even more dangerous than Pu-238, as are any number of non-nuclear chemicals. A drop of some organophosphates on the back of your hand can kill you within 10 minutes.
Malathion is a mild organophosphate. It is much easier to buy Malathion than it is plutonium.
While it is fine to worry a bit about this, it is probably safe to say that the concentration of naturally occuring radioactives in coal fly ash is probably a bigger, much more widespread deal.
Hanford's problems look sexy and dangerous, but are they really? Is the population of the Tri-cities, Portland, Kelso and Longview suddenly at a huge risk of getting various forms of cancer compared to all the other existing environmental factors?
The US Government managed to clean up the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Rocky Flats, in Colorado...
Besides, the DOE has been worrying and trying to figure out this problem for at least 20 years. A former boss of mine's father used to punch test and monitoring wells all over the area, long before I knew him. A former girlfriend worked on a research program to help figure out a way to monitor the most notorious tank.
a big problem is that they simply do not know what they are dealing with in the tanks. It's toxic, it's radioactive, a couple of them vent hydrogen, but they do not even know if the mere act of taking samples at various depths in the tanks might disturb them enough to cause problems...
Is this complex anywhere near Redmond by chance?
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
"Also, nuclear power plant technology has vastly improved since this particlar waste repository was first opened up."
It may have improved, but it still generates nuclear waste. That's something that can't be changed. The residents of Nevada are protesting the inturment of the nations nuclear waste in their backyard. And there's tons of this stuff which is going to be criss-crossing the nation via rail, and truck, terrorist opportunities abound. Nuclear may be safe? But with a loose definition of safe. And it will never be as safe as the green alternatives. When was the last time people got thyroid cancer from hydroelectricity?
260 sq.km = an area 10 miles square.
So don't drink the water and stay out of the area. Bingo, you have a nice big nature reserve that you can guarantee won't be invaded or built over by people. What could be better for wildlife and the environment?
In addition, just getting it into space isn't solely the answer to the waste problem. How much would it suck to try to colonize say, the moon 150 years from now, only to find it's logistically impossible because the surface is covered in radioactive sludge? So I'm saying, let's fire that stuff at Mercury. It's not really habitable near term, so no loss there. An even better way (in my non-solar scientist opinion) would be to lob it toward the sun, on a trajectory that would see it vaporized on the far side or even better, at a pole, so the vaporized waste gets blown out of our solar system.
My point was that we could build the reactors themselves in space, thus mediating the danger of polluting our ecosystem.
A boy can dream, anyway.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
at hanford if they don't clean the fscking pit up. and within a few short years.
damned if you do, damned for sure and doubled if you don't.
since the energy department can't get it's collective schist together on cleaning up the mess it and its predecessors promised to do for 40 years running now, the place for this waste is in the lobby of their building at 1000 independence avenue SW, washington DC. see if they get excited about THAT....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Check out this URL regarding releases of gasses from Hanford in the 1945-1972 timeframe. http://www.doh.wa.gov/hanford/publications/history /release.html
Most of my family lived 50 miles away in Yakima at the time. They did the same experiment in Oak Ridge in Tennessee, at about the same time."Begging the question" is a argumentative fallacy. It refers to a type of circular argument where the conclusion is used as a premise.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
This is because coal contains trace amounts of these elements, which are not in the form of particles, but are more likely distributed as individual atoms in individual molecules, maybe combined with carbon, certainly oxygen, and other elements. No known technology can take individual molecules of, say, uranium oxide, out of a chimney.
Now this release of radionucleides has been going on since serious use of coal began around 1600-1700.
Interestingly enough, in the UK there is often controversy over so-called leukaemia clusters, now these cases are tragic, but it is alleged that they are due to the nuclear industry, however close inspection shows that every single such cluster, with one exception, is in an area close to or downwind of a large coal-burning plant which either still exists, or was in use relatively recently. Some of these plants were lead smelters, which adds more uranium and other toxic elements. The one exception that I know of, where no industrial presence can be seen, is in Cornwall, around the village of Tintagel, and it is hardly surprising, because the local children no doubt play on their nice beach, and behind the beach are sea caves, with uranium compounds leaching out of the rocks. There will also be a high concentration of radon gas in such places, it mainly causes lung cancer by depositing daughter products in the lungs, but some of the daughter products may indeed cause leukaemia, and may be ingested in other ways.
At a guess, I would say that similar conditions of radiation release due to coal burning, and the extraction of certain other minerals, will be found worldwide, as presumably volcanic activity had released lots of radionucleides into the atmosphere during the carbiniferous era, which would eventually have found their way into the vegetation, and hence the coal.
In one particular part of the UK, when germanium transistors were in fashion, soot from factory chimneys was collected because it was rich in germanium, I think you will find that other elements (certainly selenium, which is toxic and carcinogenic, and also cadmium) can be found in significant quantities in some geographic regions.
So, coal burning will release radioactive, toxic and carcinogenic substances, fortunately not plutonium of course, although in theory an occasional atom might be formed by natural processes. After all, there are these odd atoms of uranium embedded in the moderator, coal instead of pure graphite, so there is the remote chance that a neutron from a fissioning uranium atom might be slowed by the coal, and captured by another uranium atom. But the yield would be incredibly low.
Should've moved to Oregon. Less rain, less traffic, less (no) sales tax [okay, so we have income tax] and more friendly people.
Of course, keep that all a secret. We try to keep people from moving here by talking about how much it rains. It's less than Washington, but they evidently want immigrants, and so they don't publicize that.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
when it comes to public health concerns what matters is the disbursement of the radioactive waste, not the potency (which is still pretty high).
10s of pounds of Highly radio active waste that is contained safely out of the way and not exposed to the environment is a much better option than 10s of tons of moderately radioactive waste that is spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles annually.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
read Benford's "Deep Time" - a fascinating report on his work with Sandia thinking about how we could design texts/monuments that will let our descendents 10,000 years from now that *something really bad* is underneath this pile of rock they are considering digging into. An interesting problem which will require some work to solve....
Considering Chernobol will be uninhabitable for the next million years or so, why not just store it there? (add security, and safty first though)
1. The world benefits from having 1 world-wide dump that would be easy to monitor.
2. Russia could charge good money for the storage.
3. The Eco-monkeys can't complain about it becoming "more" toxic. (yes they could bitch about transporting it though)
4. Profit for all! (sorry I couldn't resist)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I worked on a congressional race in the Tri-Cities a few years back and went on a day-long tour of the Hanford facilities with the candidate, got presentations on how they were handling the many different kinds of nuclear waste.
I don't know what was my favourite. Was it the nuclear waste that was being stored in what amounted to two coffee cans? The containment tubes rated to last 10-20 years that had been holding waste for 50?
I'm thinking I'll have to go with the underground spillover tanks. There'd be a bunch of series of 5 tanks. When tank 1 fills up, waste spills over into tank 2. Tank 2 fills up, spills into tank 3. So on and so forth until you get to tank 5 where when it fills up, the waste apparently just spills out into the ground. Naturally, they weren't meant to last this long either.
So in addition to the nuclear waste, you have to deal with all the contaminated soil and whatnot too. US Gov't really clusterfucked the area. Fortunately, the state gov't(led by AG Gregoire) nailed their balls to an agreement to clean up all this shit.
That being said, it's a neat facility and everyone was friendly and eager to show what they were doing. There are a lot of interesting plume diagrams showing how the contamination is making its way to the Columbia River.
$1000 to a pound? Now might be the time to convert my savings from GBP into USD.
Thank you for mentioning this, AC. US breeders are very unfriendly beasts. I mean, for God's sake, the heat is transferred through *liquid sodium*. Not only does that place a whallop on your pumps, but if you spring a leak... well, look out.
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
One way to accelerate the solution to a problem is just to redefine it. Here's one such bright idea, hatched by the DOE: "If we reclassify some of the waste to a lower-level category, we don't need to clean it up. We can just cover it with grout and leave it." Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington State) has a lengthy discussion of this here. Sen. Cantwell's efforts to short circuit this nonsense may have paid off, as this subsequent statement seems to indicate.
We are not talking about the same 'dose' apparently.
When I receive iodine-129 from a radiologist, I am still receiving beta radiation at levels higher than that I would receive from Hanford groundwater (provided I would drink it due to the high chemical contamination).
That radioactive exposure (dose) is not affected by the consumption of the non-radioactive iodine. All the non-radioactive iodine does is assure that the thyroid does not concentrate iodine-129 in the tissues there.
A diet that includes iodized salt would have the same affect as the iodine tablets to individuals consuming iodine-129 contaminated Hanford groundwater. The concentration of iodine-129 in Hanford groundwater is low and localized, and it is even lower at the shoreline.
Don't believe me? Read the State of Washington Department of Ecology's assessments. Or try the USEPA.
Dose is used interchangeably for radiation exposure at Hanford. Perhaps that is the basis of your confusion.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
If an accident happens they'll just blame it on terrorism. That way they don't have to admit they screwed up, AND the department of homeland security is sure to see their funding increased by a lot.
That woks out to about .009 oz of plutonium and .8 liters of radioactive waste per US citizen. As a taxpayer, I want my plutonium and radioactive waste! Where do I sent my request?
It is important to realize some facts about the Hanford clean-up:
First, the problems they are talking about happened very early in nuclear power plant research, in the 50s and earlier. They are not so sloppy now in the storage of nuclear waste. Back then, they made extremely severe problems for themselves, which are very difficult to correct.
Second, there is a huge amount of government fraud, apparently. My uncle was the head of one of the groups at Battelle studying the problems. The way they talk now about the cleanup is exactly the way they were talking in the 70s. Apparently nothing has been done, but they continue to milk the issue for money.
There are tanks at the Hanford site that constantly boil, and have boiled for more than 40 years, because of the heat from radioactivity. They have made devices to examine the boiling. Back in the late 60s they decided they would try to stabilize the tanks by "glassifying" them. The wanted to turn the entire radioactive mass inside a tank into a solid mass of glass.
They are talking about this now, too, and they are giving the same completion date, "15 to 30 years from now". That's why I say that apparently nothing has been done, even though they have spent many, many billions.
What is apparently happening in this story is that they are trying to scare the public so that they can get even more money.
Here's more about U.S. government corruption: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Well, your original post was a score 5, Troll with my settings (you win!)
Given the flaky mods that are given here, anything positive about MS, critical of Uncle Sam or "nucular" energy is seen as troll on par with the GNAA.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Now who would've thought a nuclear cleanup carries major risks?
Another good post by an AC. Coal kills many, many people each year.
A study by Abt Associates estimated that coal power plants *in the US alone* kill 24,000 people *per year*. That's just the deaths; there were also 38,000 non-fatal heart attacks, 554,000 asthma attacks, and 3 million lost workdays. On the other hand, deaths due to nuclear power plant radiation *in the whole world* (almost exclusively from Chernobyl, which was a patently stupid event from a horribly archaic design) range from the low thousands to the low tens of thousands, and between the upper tens of thousands to the low millions of related diseases - in the 50 years since the world's first nuclear power plant. In the US, nuclear power plant-related casualties are hard to estimate because they're so low. Yes, we use more coal power than nuclear - but nowhere close to the scale of health and environmental damage coal causes compared to nuclear.
At the very least, nuclear power is *as safe* as coal power. At best, it puts coal power to shame. And then there's the national security interests of nuclear: some of the most concentrated uranium deposits in the world are in our neighbor to the north, Canada. The world's largest deposits are in another ally, Australia.
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
Cleaning up any nuclear plant site is a disaster. If you can, you're better off just encasing the damned thing in concrete and walking away. Of course, the liquid waste will probably come through the concrete a few hundred years later, so this isn't as comforting as it could be, but anything you do to try to break the plant up and ship it somewhere is just going to release the radioactivity sooner, when it's hotter. In the case of stuff with a long half-life, it may not make any difference, but in the case of stuff with a short half-life, of course it does.
For the NIMBY folks, I'll volunteer to host a PBR in my backyard.
A Pabst Blue Ribbon? What are you thinking? You'll wipe out your whole neighborhood!
All but one of the canyon facilities has been closed up and sealed but there are still a lot of enriched fuel rods that need to be processed. Some of them have been in the tanks so long they're decaying and becoming dangerous to handle. If something isn't done about them there will be a problem, guaranteed. Just like the tanks. The longer they sit there, the more they leak. Get on with it already.
Hanford and the Tri-Cities is really a beautiful area. They have hydroplane races on the Columbia every summer, beautiful river side parks and the rural areas near the river are lush farm land. Several very nice wineries are located not far away and there are great places to hike, climb, windsurf and bike all within a short distance.
Adjusted for age the cancer rate in that area is a bit lower than the national average. Probably more related to the great summer weather and opportunities for exercise than the activities at the engineering works.
The one down side are the straight line winds that kick up from time to time. They used to call them termination winds because the next day so many people would come in and quit. They will scour the paint right off your car if you're unlucky enough to be out driving.
Yes, there are clean up issues that need to be addressed at Hanford, but don't let that color your perception of the entire area. It's really very nice.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I don't think that's possible. Radioactivity is spontaneous: even if the bacteria could possibly like eating radioactive isotopes, that wouldn't stop her from being radioactive too. There is no way her organism could "decompose" the isotopes into other stable ones (unless she carried a tiny particle accelerator in her stomach).
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
Privatizing something does not necessarily make it less safe than having it run by government. Remember, Chernobyl was a government run power plant. What makes things less safe is having no accountability. If there are inadequate laws or enforcement, things will become unsafe because the people in charge, whether it is a government or a corporation, will want to cut corners. Having an independent organization with oversight and enforcement powers is the best way to ensure safety in a situation like this.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
Who said it was efficient? As far as I recall, it's horribly inefficient... heat the water in the pipes, which then heats the water that makes the steam (or in some cases directly turns a turbine). Every time you transfer the engergy you lose a great deal of it.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
However, for comparison, the acceptable levels of radium-226 in drinking water is 5 picocuries per liter. Radium-226 has 1 curie per gram (by definition of a curie, which is based on Radium 226), so that's 5 picograms of radium per liter. 5 picograms = 5x10^-12 grams.
A little bit of some radioactive elements goes a long way.
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
Rocky Flats is the factory north of Denver where nuclear bombs were assembled until 1992. It is 12 years into the 14 year cleanup plan, and there hasnt been a major accident yet. The place will revert to a wildlife preserve (e.g. three-eye frogs). There was lots of doom-and-gloom too when evaluating its cleanup plan.
Of course, I suppose a few people who also live in Virginia might be opposed to the idea...
1) The US uses an outdated method of uranium enrichment - gas diffusion. Few other places in the world still use it. Gas centrifuges are the most popular, but laser isotope separation is increasing in use.
2) They're talking about a small number of mutations (some mutations *always* happen) to the children of the people who *cleaned up the reactor* at Chernobyl. And Chernobyl was pure idiocy performed on a design that noone in their right mind would ever dream of using anymore. Besides, would you rather be breathing in all of that coal soot that is *known to kill* at a very high rate? I wouldn't be surprised if it affects the rate of DNA mutation at birth as well - and it doesn't take some sort of "meltdown" for you to encounter coal pollution.
3) Three Mile Island wasn't a particularly bad event. It scared people, but the amount of radioactive elements vented was relatively small.
It is a valid point, however, that the entire process needs to be taken into account when determining how clean or dirty a fuel source is. However, you'll find that when it comes to mining, coal mining is a particularly nasty process as well - as bad if not worse. And while hex is a rather dangerous chemical, the more people move to laser isotope separation, the less it will be used.
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
The operation at Hanford, and much of the early U.S. nuclear weapons program, was run on a "War Emergency" basis. That means that production was considered critical to the national security of the United States. If the plant was producing too much radioactive waste, or had other problems, too bad, we'll deal with it later. If we didn't produce enough nuclear weapons to counter Soviet aggression and expansionism, pollution was going to be the least of our problems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
FWIW, Cobalt-60 is probably even more dangerous than Pu-238, as are any number of non-nuclear chemicals.
To scare the general public even further, we do not know about the toxicity of about 90% of chemical compounds known to science.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Okay, so you have toured the plant. Okay, you live near the plant. Okay, so you watch TV news for information about the plant. So far I haven't heard anything that makes you remotely qualified to tell us if the plant is safe or not. For all you know you are already subject to a host of illnesses that may not manifest themsevles for years to come.
This Nuclear weapons testing... this topic contstantly makes me realize how short-sighted the US Military really is.
Ok boys, you got the sandbox. Didn't mean you had to bring firepower to obliterate it for the next X centuries, and oh... what's that leaking out of your pocket??
Reactors designed for the production of weapons grade plutonium generate much more waste than a nuclear power plant. In a nuclear power plant, you want to get as much energy as possible out of the fuel before you replace it. That's simple economics. So the fuel is used for as long as possible. For the production of weapons grade plutonium, you need to do the opposite. The longer the fuel is in the reactor, the higher the percentage of undesirable isotopes of plutonium in the spent fuel. That means that the spent fuel is removed and processed to recover plutonium on a much shorter time cycle. The less time the fuel spends in the reactor, the higher the quality of the plutonium produced. So the reactor is run at high power and the fuel is replaced frequently.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
We'll it (Plutonium) is not the most dangerous thing there is but it's bad enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
I do believe that the first "man-made, sustained nuclear reaction" occurred under the Stagg Field bleachers at the University of Chicago.
Fermi, et al.?
Actually, Hanford *was* a nuclear power plant. Nuclear reactors were constructed to irradiate uranium with neutrons to make plutonium. The first reactor was the "B" reactor which has been designated as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. Heat from the B Reactor fission process was never used to produce electricity but was instead transferred to the nearby Columbia River. Several additional nuclear reactors were constructed at Hanford over the years, none of which produced commercial electric power, until "N Reactor" was constructed. N Reactor *did* produce commercial electric power (and was the only weapons reactor which ever did--approx. 1000 megawatts) until it was shut down in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident. The Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) also constructed two large commercial nuclear power plants at Hanford in the 70s. One was never finished and still stands there today. The second reactor next door to it *was* finished and is currently in operation and producing commercial electric power.
where one tectonic plate is being "slid" under another one, anything and everything dropped there will be carried right under the earth's crust and it will probably be hundreds of millions of years before *any* of it came within a few miles of the surface ecology of the planet again.
since this only requires casting the "waste" into scrap iron and dumping the same at sea with accuracy easily obtained by GPS it would be a *remarkably* cheap option, as well as being utterly permanent.
Plan B is to convert it all into depleted uranium ammunition and "dispose" of it in Iran, Syria, and anywhere else the american military industrial complex decides to mcarthur-ise next...
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
DOE is more than capable of doing this and have done so for many years. Admittedly there have been a few problems but it never started a real situation of calamatious proportions.
Last I checked, the DoE ran the Pantex nuclear weapons plant. The same site with some obscene safety issues. Accidentally drilling into the core of a nuclear device resulted in the evacuation of the entire plant. Securing a warhead with duct tape increased the chances of a flat out nuclear explosion. And that's ignoring the clichéd "OMG THREE MILE ISLAND" commentary.
+++Warning to any fool that thinks it's easy to steal radioactive material from one of these teams. You'll die twice before you get to pull your trigger once!+++
Perhaps you reached this conclusion because the security teams were cheating during their security drills ? Cheating. for twenty years. It's not too hard to look impenetrable when you know the exact building and wall where an attack will take place. A DoE whistleblower admitted to a 50% success rate for security tests. Special forces teams were able to penetrate Los Alamos and wander off with enough material to create a nuclear bomb. Even an freakin' journalist was able to sneak into Los Alamos. There are plenty of other issues raised over at the Project On Governmental Oversight. Again, that's ignoring all the major security issues with CREM's going on over the last month.
Now, you're absolutely right in the fact that we need to get that waste cleaned up. But thinking that the DoE, NNSA, or the US government on the whole is "more than capable" is bullshit. We're flirting with disaster. If we take the outlook that everything is fine and dandy, we're going to quickly hit the point where someone will cause a situation of calamatious proportions.
--LordPixie
Ryan, I was told exactly the same thing in the early 70s. At that time they were planning on doing the glassification inside each tank. Something is very wrong, I think. It sounds like a huge boondoggle, at minimum.
"whoops", the washington public power production system, used steam from three hanford reactors for public power generation for something like 20 years, until the last of the piles was shut down in the 1980s. costs related to buying alternate power contributed greatly to the bankruptcy of WPPPS when the piles were getting rotten and unpredictable and kept tripping off line. so yes, the hanford reservation WAS a nuclear production facility for weapons plutonium. AND YES, hanford WAS a public power reactor farm as well.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Washington State has the dubious distinction of being one of the world's centers for genocidal and omicidal (destruction of all human life) technology, storage, and control.
In the East, we have Hanford Nuclear Site where the fuel for atomic bombs has been made for fifty years. Huge radioactive pollution problems now.
Just south of there across the Oregon border is the Umatilla Ordinance Depot. This is the storage area of enough nerve gas to kill everyone on earth many times over. The 'juice' or 'Hermiston hairspray' (after the local town) is stored in liquid form in hardened canisters ready to be placed into missles and lobbed off at anyone who pisses us off. This stuff will make your town look like Jonestown, regardless of where you are or who you are. There was a plan to burn ALL of it and rid the earth of this danger. But since the great Arab massacre (which we daintilly refer to as '9-11'), plans to destroy all this nerve gas have been postponed for environmental safety reasons. Someone wants to keep their options open.
The third leg of Washington State's doorway to hell is the US Navy Undersea Warfare Center in Bangor, tucked into a little bay about 30 miles west of Seattle. This is where the nuclear submarines of the US Navy are controlled. Each of these ships can travel underwater for months without surfacing. Each carries enough Underwater ICBMs to destroy hundreds of cities with hydrogen bombs. When submerged, the only way to communicate with these ships is with very slow Ultra Low Wave radio that requires huge underground antennas miles in length.
In a sense, all this is good because it has solved a major problem that has plagued mankind since the beginning of history. That is, how do you protect yourself from being invaded and slaughtered by your neighbors? Since the mid-1960s, omnicide technology has solved the problem of providing for a national defense. It is no longer possible for anyone to invade and defeat us (or anyone who has this technology).
This is good.
But it has a serious price. Omnicide technology must always be guarded against its use and it can never be let out of control. This stuff isn't weapons of mass destruction because it can't be used as weapons, that is as an instrument that causes great bodily harm to your enemy but not yourself. It's in a new category all together.
It's surprising that in the modern age the omnicide technology from the previous century is never discussed on TV, radio, newspapers, or magazines. It's almost as if everyone has decided that if we never talk about this, then it will go away. But, no, it's here, it will never go away and it must be monitored and guarded until the end of time. This is the true legacy of the 1960's, not hippies and all the stuff that the news media says the 60's were about. No, it's the institutionalism of omnicidal technology.
Actually we have been quite lucky given the mental instablilty of the world leaders of the time. All this death technology was under the control of people like Lyndon Johnson, Mao Zhe-Dong (who was insane due to teritary siphilys), Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Bhrezhnev. Perhaps we only survived because these guys were obsessed with world war II power balancing mentality, and didn't really deeply comprehend how easily they could kill everyone on earth.
I sometimes wonder whether the Arabs who have declared war on the USA really understand how easily and quickly the Americans could kill every Muslim on earth. I also think that the American refusal to use this huge arsenal of genocidal technology, in the face of continued terrorist attacks, gives them true moral superiority over the Arabs in this conflict.
Historically, Americans are strange warriors in that they can be attacked over and over again and they won't respond. Then, one more little attack comes, and they respond with a built up ferocity that is vastly greater than sum of all the attacks that initially made on them. I don't think that the Arabs qu
what's scary about it? could you please point out exactly what was dangerous about it?
the worst we can do is add a tiny drop of radioactivity to an already intensely radioactive environment.
Breeder reactors are not nearly as efficient as normal pressure reactors are, ergo not what you want for comerical use. They also produce weapons grade plutonium, which we really don't need anymore of.
I heard a talk by a former professor who had worked on the Hanford situation. He mostly talked about the underground storage tanks.
For starters, the records are horrible. Nobody really knows what was put in those tanks.
Second - some of the waste is fairly dilute, making it much more economical to try to concentrate it before treating it (low-level waste might be stored onsite for a decade to decay it and then just dumped safely in the river or otherwise treated as non-radioactive chemical waste).
Third - little has been done to effectively study it. Lots of studies have been done, but they've all had design problems - like poor controls or no controls. Probably just an excuse to spend money.
Basically, the whole mess is a boondoggle. And who wants to actually clean it up? That means doing something. If you do something and it goes wrong, somebody gets fired - usually the guy in charge. On the other hand, if you do nothing we practically guarantee an environmental disaster - but probably not until after the guy in charge has retired. Which route would you take if you were in charge?
Congress just needs to clean house. Good luck seeing it happen though. Maybe if we have a Chernobyl of our own...
The downside of Solar is that unused energy has to be stored (batteries... yuck) and that the amount of energy corresponds directly to an Area you can fill with solar cells. Solar cells are not efficient, nor cheap, nor do they last very long (without maintenance).
However, they don't explode, create waste (after being built) and are much simpler than a reactor.
I still think a reactor is more likely to be a serviceable project because humans emphasize the short term over the long term, and a reactor would give us more in the short term. I think it's a more realistic short term goal.
Remember "Red Mars" (I think) where the author posits these GIANT foil mirrors in space, that redirect the sunlight to points on the planet? If we could launch a few hundred giant mirrors, the energy harvest might be enough short term to get it off the ground. A nuclear reactor on the other hand, is easy to explain to politicians.
Hey, we'll see what happens.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Born a webfoot actually, St. Helens.
Moved out at a young-ish age, just over the river to Vancouver, then moved up to Snohomish county just before the Californians came and layed waste to the area.
Now am a Connecticut native... I do miss the portland area.... I really need to get back to the rose garden soon, the girlfriend would love it : )
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
I think that is a temp site until Yucca Mountain is done.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
That's what drove me away from being a beer drinker.
I attend RIT in beautiful "sunny" Rochacha NY.
Beer is the big thing up with us lonely tech-school guys, but I stick to my guns and only indulge in good hard stuff, after hearing the following quote one night on my freshman floor:
"Hey, I found an extra $5, let's spring for Pabst"
Decided it was Guinness on tap, or no beer at all.
Still, I'd host a Pabst in my backyard, but only if I could use riot gear on all that attended.
Sorry, it's late in the day for me, I'm bored at work, and in major amounts of pain from stubbing my toe fiercely earlier today.... ignore me, please : )
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
People living near Hanford are already living on borrowed time.
An environmental engineer friend of mine, Larry Cornett noticed back in 1994 during a routine survey that the temperatures and radiation levels from the nuclear waste containers at Hanford were unusually high and getting higher due to what he later discovered was the unforseen effect of the precipitation of radioactive waste in the containers (as the radioactive clumps grow bigger, they generate more heat and radiation). In his urgent report to the Department of Energy, he projected that there would be a 95+% chance of heat explosion and catastrophic release of radiation within 10 years due to the precipitation of the waste in the containers, unless action was taken.
Larry's report (which I believe he links to on his website) contains the details, but the steam jets from such a "conventional" heat/pressure explosion (which could cause many other containers already under stress to explode) would kill just about all life for miles around Hanford, and spread dangerous levels of radiation into the ecosystem for at least tens of miles around (and once radioactive waste was loose in the ecosystem, nobody knows for certain how far it would spread or how many millions of people it would affect). As you might guess, Larry was fired for his trouble and his report suppressed. According to Larry, as recently as 5 years ago the instictive reaction of the DOE was to bury a problem instead of deal with it, which I think you all should find terrifying, especially those of you in Washington State!
After a multi-year legal battle depicted on his link and in the newspaper articles he links to, Larry got his back pay and pension on whistle-blower protections and the DOE temporarily fixed the problem by diluting the waste further across more containers and installing automated stirrers in the new containers to keep the waste from precipitating, but when I talked to him a few years ago Larry thought that would only buy Hanford another 20 years or so before an explosion was 95+% likely, apparently not enough time for the DOE to evacuate the waste to Nevada...
And just how do you think most other types of power generation work?? Coal/Oil/Natural Gas all use the same method. Heat water that moves turbines. The design detmines how many exchanges you have. As far as the efficiency is concerned you can park a nuclear sub off of New York (city, not state) and hook it up and power the entire city. Now what other type of power generation fits in such a small package. Oh yeah, and you only have to refuel it once every 20 years or so (less for commerical reactors because of difference in fuel).
I posted a while back about Hanford.
After having seen it from the air, parts of it that few people ever see, I have to tell you to believe the worst case scenarios. I am pro-nuke, but what I saw at hanford is something worse than the destruction left by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukes. Its not death: with that at least the cycle of life begins again with decay. It is sterilization. The damage is already done there, and it is hard to see how it could ever be fixed. If they say its going to take 7 billion to fix it, do it. Its that bad.
Great reading skills there. He specifically said in his post that he has worked at Hanford. Not just sat in his chair and watched the news. If you're going to try to punch holes in his credibility, at least take the time to read what he says in his comment.
1. Distribute books that describe various people getting super powers from nuclear waste (check) 2. Accumulate lotso f nuclear waste (check) 3. ????? 4. PROFIT!
The nerve agents are currently being burned in at least one place. The Anniston Army Depot's (in Alabama) weapons incenerator went online either earlier this year or late last year (can't remember which). I also seem to remember there being another incenerator somewhere in the midwest that is opertaional. The sub base to which you are referring is actually out near Port Orchard (fairly close to Seattle), and they only are home base for about 1/2 of the boomers (ballistic missle subs). The other 1/2 are based out of King's Bay, GA. Also hundreds of warheads is a bit of an overstatement
As to Chernobyl, I think the pressure under a vile regime such as communism can have much the same effect as having a huge financial pressure, it can make people cut corners.
The difficulty with privately owned things is that there is far too much contract law etc between the various parties so they pass the buck (at least it was so for the UK railways). With aircraft we do somewhat better, the regulatory agency (CAA) is highly respected, because they do a good job, but they are still subject to the accident investigators (AAIB) who are strictly independent. But the CAA does not have the manpower they deserve, and as I often work in avionics design, I know of companies, who I would not work for (I have seen the facts at first hand), who will produce something marginal or plainly inadequate, and manage to get it approved for flight. This is often due to incompetence up front, in incorrectly estimating what needs to be done, or believing that when a specification says that something is mandatory, that it can be negotiated away at the end of the project. Others, who seemingly do not make so much profit, take the correct approach from day 1, and don't need to be devious or plainly dishonest.
So I don't think you can ever have too much regulation where safety is concerned. You don't need stupid rules, but rather competent people with authority, and they have to have the final say, in any dispute where the acciuntants want to cut corners.
In the ideal world the safety assessors would have all the power you and I would both like, and there would be no cowboys anywhere in the chain of command, but as we know, it is not always so. I know of managers who simply should be barred for life from working in any safety-critical industry, but who can do it? By the same reasoning there are people who should be barred for life from ever driving a car, I see one or two of those on the road every day, but where is the enforcement agency? Too over-committed with other work, probably.
These things are never simple, and there is never the perfect solution, except to do nothing and revert back to the stone age. But really punitive fines for violations, so there is every economic incentive to do the right thing, would be one approach, just the same as imposing really big fines on a Criminal Monopoly might make them behave....... Just don't let Sir Bill anywhere near a nuclear reactor!
My uncle, who was one of the research program chiefs, said exactly the same thing as the professor, but in the 70s or late 60s. They've spent many billions, and apparently have achieved very little.
My understanding is not only do people not want to risk their jobs, but they don't actually have a plan. Anything that would handle the material, or even observe it, must be able to withstand extremely high radiation levels.
The whole thing sounds like extreme government corruption to me. United States government corruption worries me so much I put together some links to 3 movies and 35 books about it: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
The production and extraction of plutonium uses a very different type of reactor than the Pressurized Water Reactors that are used for power generation in much of the world. A lot of the waste at Hanford isn't due to the reactor operation per se, but rather the chemical extractions that are necessary to recover the plutonium. These extractive processes generate a lot of waste chemicals (like acids that have been used to dissolve fuel) that are contaminated with hot particles. That's the origin of the liquid radioactive waste at Hanford.
Waste from a PWR is solid and it predominantly consists of used or burned fuel assemblies that are still radioactive but no longer capable of producing electricity efficiently. The fuel assemblies contain the fuel rods which encapsulate the fuel pellets and the daughter products of the fission reaction (various isotopes of noble gases trapped in the fuel rods).
The mass of waste produced by a nuclear plant in a given year of operation is miniscule compared to the thousands of tons of ash, soot, and greenhouse gases emitted by your typical coal plant with a similar electrical output.
I just want to know why the stupid article is mixing US and Metric measurements.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
The Hanford wastes are composed of the byproducts of reprocessing, including organic solvents which were used to do solvent separations of U, Pu and fission products. The concentration of these products is very low vis a vis ceramic fuel pellets so the volumes are comparatively huge, and the solubility/mobility is immensely greater.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
With Hanaford, you're talking about millions of gallons of acidic radioactive sludge that's the byproduct of decades of fuel processing. This stuff can't be stored in a manner that'll be safe for more than a few decades without serious effort. IMHO the best option is to re-sort the stuff and process it for any useful isotopes; then, either solidify the rest for long term storage / disposal, or break it down into more stable or safer short-lived isotopes.
nuclear waste transport casks
more info
I live in the Tri-City area in Washington next to Hanford and I've been swimming in the Columbia River all my life. My recently sprouted saiamese twin and I haven't noticed any harmful effects from the radiation leaking into the river... at least not to mammals. But what is really so bad about a 6 legged frog? I'm sure there is a good market for them in the food industry!
Hey, guys. Big gulps, huh? Cool. All right! Well, see ya later.
A "bit of an overstatement"? That's putting it mildly, GP post was completely moronic (or just a troll), I'm surprised it isn't -1 already.
WPPSS (pronounce whoops hahaha) changed their name to Energy Northwest cause it was bad business for a nuclear power plant to be known as, well, whoops. Only a good 15 minute drive from where I live.
Hey, I bet you guys don't get ladies with 3 knockers in your neck of the woods. Mutation can be fun!!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
You, too, can type (hanford nuclear coverup) into Google. And what's so silly about the "emotional" words in my post? mafia, "pays it off", pretended, "spewing deadly poison", "living the lie", "for a company and a government that were killing them", "bitter legacy", "threaten disasters", suffering, "milliChernobyl"... Those accurately reflect the appropriate reaction to the news that "U.S. Nuclear Cleanup Carries Major Risks" at the Hanford nuke spill zone. It's not paranoia when there's a rational basis for fear, and everything we're discussing is factual truth. Emotional imagery is appropriate among actual humans who care about the destruction and lies perpetrated at Hanford. The pretense of unemotional denial has kept Hanford, and toxic destruction like it across America, a growing threat for generations.
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make install -not war
Either that, or the laws of physics trump advertising slogans.
There are a lot of good uses for radioactive materials - but we have to stop pretending that it is cheap, clean and green and treat it with respect like all the other dangerous materials used in industry. You don't hear anyone sing the praises of Hydroflouric acid - which is far less dangerous than plutonium, but dangerous enough that it is used only when there isn't a good alternative.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One small correction...
I doubt that the DOD is holding on to the chemical weapons at Umatilla because of any threats of terrorism. There is _no_ chance that those weapons will be used. Most of the chemical weapons there are decades old. Also, many of our old munitions containing GB (sarin) are unusable because the liquid agent has partially gelled or crystallized.
The main problem is with regulation. Many states (and their respective Depts. of Environmental Management) are wary of incineration because of the emissions (our M-55 rockets are packed in fiberglass shipping & firing tubes that contain trace amounts of dioxins/furans, as well as heavy metals). So, many of the chemical depots are looking at neutralization as an alternative.
I'm surprised that Umatilla hasn't started agent operations yet. Maybe they're still at the Surrogate Trial Burn Stage (where they test the incinerators with subbstitute chemicals).
The main point is: we're not going to be firing 40+-year old chemical weapons at terrorists any time soon.
I believe the Anniston site has been operational since late summer/early fall 2003. The sites at Pine Bluff (AK) and Umatilla were a few months behind Anniston (at least when I was working there). You might be thinking of the Newport depot in the midwest. Not sure if they're using incineration or neutralization, though.
istorically, Americans are strange warriors in that they can be attacked over and over again and they won't respond.
This isn't strictly the case. America is a strange country in that it meddles in other countries pretty comprehensively (sometimes with very damaging consequences), then when a response is made, one might say the attack is returned, then America is horrified. That said that meddling does not always involve direct military intervention, although a quick examination of the modern history of South America shows plreny of interventions. Iraq & Iran are also great examples of American meddling. Iran had a democratically elected president toppled, to be replaced by a autocratic ruler. When he was finally removed by a popular revolution (resulting in an islamic state), America supports Iraq as counterbalacing force. Support includes delivery of chemical weapons.
America has the dubious priveledge of being the only democracy to invade another democracy (the Dominican Republic).
Then, one more little attack comes, and they respond with a built up ferocity that is vastly greater than sum of all the attacks that initially made on them. I don't think that the Arabs quite realize this and as a result of many relatively small attacks could find themselves subjected to a systemic de-population campaign from the West. The Americans nearly wiped out the native Indian tribes of North America in the late 1800's when the Native Americans wouldn't stop attacking and murdering the settlers. This could easily end up being the fate of Islam as well.
Those in the middle East have long memories. Very long memories. The crusades still resonate for people in that region. The point is that memories are very long, people are equally willing to wait a long time for results. What we are seeing in Iraq is only the beginning. I think America has drawn itself into a war that it cannot win. Not even by genocide. America is attempting to swat a mosquito with a sledgehammer.
I found something in Machiavelli's The Prince a while ago that I'm going to paraphrase:
"No country can enter another contry unless it has the support of the population, no matter how strong its army is".
meh
I think that the first question is "What defines a major accident?"
For example, a major military base can pretty much count on at least a couple of deaths due to car accidents alone.
You could define a "major accident" as a mistake or failure that costs a human life or more than $1 million to fix or rectify. Under this definition, I would bet for one happening on a multiple year, multiple billion dollar project. Too many people, and a $1 million accident isn't that hard to come by. An idiot with a forklift could do that in about a minute.
I don't read AC A human right
what really couts is how many rads are released onto the atmsphere. nuclear power plants do not rease this radiation into the atmosphere. coal does
There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Um What weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?
A better statement would be a coal plant releases more radioactive waste per megawatt/hour than a nuclear plant produces.
Per Pound, a nuclear powerplant produces more rads. On the other hand, the nuclear waste is waste, not pollution, because it's contained. You can fit the average nuclear plant's yearly waste in a semi trailer with the shielding. A better measure for a coal plant's waste is in train-loads per day. And that's not including what goes up the smoke-stacks.
I don't read AC A human right
Ask Slashdot...
"Has slashdot lost it?"
I live near Rocky Flats. The local media recently reported on the final destruction of what has been called "The most dangerous building in America". Its gone, cleaned up and demolished. We're all still alive here. It can be done sucessfully despite worries from "The New Scientist".
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
Read the AC's post below. The plant is being built, I can watch the progress just a couple of miles from my office. Housing has exploded here as thousands of people are being hired to build the plant.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
How about more nails in the moderation coffin, as evidenced by the moderation of my metacomment whining about the malmod of its parent:
Starting Score: 1 point
Moderation +1
70% Insightful
30% Offtopic
Extra 'Insightful' Modifier 0 (Edit)
Karma-Bonus Modifier +1 (Edit)
Total Score: 3
And the 4 replies to my metacomment, with no replies to the parent that started this kerfuffle.
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make install -not war
Good. Maybe this time it is different. However, my recollection is that they have had building projects in the past, also.
Let's move unstable nuclear waste like 10000+ miles to the complete opposite side of the earth. I'm sure with such a short trip, there won't ever be any accidents. . .
How is the real cost of energy calculated? Think about it. When people are paying 7-12 cents per kilowatt hour, does the price include this 50 billion dollar clean up? Of course it doesn't.
Take Canada for example...
Nuclear energy subsidies from 1953 to 2001 were approximately 16.6 billion. Total loans written off to the fossil fuel industry were another $2.8 billion since 1970. Cleaning up old radioactive waste and decommissioning uranium tailings added another $850 million. This totals$20.25 billion just on nuclear subsidies and clean up costs and fossil fuel forgiven loans. If this $20.25 had been poured into wind energy programs, and R&D to new technologies, it might be powering 4.5 million homes today. And keep in mind that fossil fuel plants would still have the cost of fuel.
It may be more efficient than some other methods, but I've never heard anyone push efficiency as one of nuclear power's strong points. I am an advocate of nuclear power (especially the future possibilities), but I've never felt it was particularly efficient.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You apparently didn't read my post. I stated that *US breeders* used molten sodium. I didn't say that molten sodium is inherently a breeder requirement.
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
Ever heard of the NRDL? In the 50's The Hunters Point Naval shipyard on the south side of San Francisco was the site of the first major nuclear decontamination lab in the states. Most the ships used in shot atol and bikini island series of tests were docked here. Crazy reading if your interested. This place is in the top 75% of superfund sites in the US. The only catch is that there trying to build low income housing on it.e x.htm l
http://www.sfweekly.com/webextra/fallout/ind
The groups of tribes are the Shoshone and the Paiute. The Western Shoshone Nation are the ones most closely associated with Yucca Mountain. It's considered a place of powerful spiritual energy, but it is not a buriel ground.
The Shoshones and Paiutes are against it. Tribes in Minnesota (who have a nuclear dump site) and Utah (where an interim storage site is planned) are for it. The problem I see is that no one seems to have a better idea than Yucca. The only other "solution" I've heard thus far was to leave them in the hundred covered storage pools across the country. Strangely enough, you never hear about newer reactors designs like IFR/AFR which can process existing spent fuel and decommissioned weapons into shorter-lived isotopes. This would make either Yucca not needed or allow for only temporary storage instead of a 10,000 year design.
Of course bringing up Chernobyl is a red herring. First, no accident in the US has even approached Chernobyl. Second, the designs of US reactors is fundamentally different from Chernobyl in that a similar disaster is about as likely as a meteorite falling on your head. Third, Chernobyl was a weapons generation facility that had the beneficial side effect of electrical production. Fourth, the accident occurred because the fuel rods were being replaced while the reactor was in operation. Fifth, Cherobyl was a graphite moderated reactor -- graphite burns hotly. Sixth, the containment dome on Chernobyl was much thinner than those on US plants.
Some more facts on Chernobyl: It is located in Ukraine. Yes, the concrete sarcophagus is breaking down. They were supposed to be doing something about this and, contrary to your assertions, they are doing something about it. A larger, metal container is under construction. It cannot be built onsite for safety reasons. However a rail system is being constructed so that both halves can be transported once complete to enclose the site -- including the old shell.
"...even though it can easily affect most of europe..." That's a bold statement my friend. Care to back that up with some references? Various nations have been contributing money for some time now. Next you're gonna say that hundreds of thousands died in the accident. Scare tactics, nothing more. Hundreds dies, and their loss should not be belittled, but parts of Chernobyl are inhabited to this day let alone many surrounding areas. In fact, wildlife is flourishing. As is turns out, humans are a bigger threat to wildlife than radioactivity.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
So a "Troll" is a correct, but emotional, argument. Actually, this anti-nuke poster feels like pro-nuke posts get preference on Slashdot. And I don't think that negative emotions about nuclear pollution and its coverup by corporations and their government detract from the presentation of the argument. If someone disagrees, as you do, it's appropriate to disagree in a contradicting post. Just modding down is a cowardly anonymous copout.
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make install -not war
thaaaat's right... I remember that now. And you make a good point about electrolysis. I don't understand why you got modded down, since teh story is about nuclear cleanup, which is one-off from discussing cleaner energy alternatives, but, I chose to post not moderate so I'll s/u now :)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
This is one of the models that Benford and his team considered - a decline of civilisation. However they also considered the "see-saw" model - we enter a new dark ages for a couple of thousand years, and society loses a lot of knowledge, but then comes back up again a couple of thousand years later. Doesn't necessarily need to be something terminally bad that kills all humans, how about a global genocidal dictator, a global version of what happened to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot? or some disease that wipes a lot of us out (99%?) but the few survivors build up an immunity?
So, leave aside the difficulty and expense of trying to secure the material against terrorists in the present locations. Leave aside the fact that these facilities are at or beyond capacity already. Leave aside the security advantages to putting all the (bad) eggs in one basket, and REALLY guarding that basket. Fact: IT IS NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO SECURE PRESENT STORAGE FACILITIES ON THE TIMESCALE REQUIRED AGAINST THE RELEVANT THREATS. Even God might find it a challenge. Such threats include not only the threat of terrorists, but natural disasters, and the inexorable passage of time. Furthemore, the threats must be dealt with without the assurance of human intervention to mitigate them!
From my time as an engineering student, and from my sister's work on the 10000 year hydrology model while she was at the NRC, I am far more familiar with the project than the average layman. I am familiar with most of the objections raised by opponents, including the transportation risks, internal security questions, auditability, questions about geologic and hydrologic instability, and the issue of whether even 10000 years is long enough. I even agree with many of them.
To each of them, I respond: the current "solution" is a greater and far more immediate danger, and for the forseeable (~100 year) future THERE IS NO BETTER SOLUTION POSSIBLE (... unless you propose the United States annex Australia; there's a very nice deserted section of the Outback that has better long term geology and hydrology, but the Aussies are understandably not too keen on that).
Yucca mountain may be a flawed plan. In fact, you can even say it sucks in many respects. In fact, I'll do it for you: "The Yucca Mountain plan sucks in many respects." However, I've never heard anyone who objected to it who could seriously present a better, safer, and more "secure" one. Most suggestions consist of saying "These folks made the waste, they should solve the problem; not my problem, and certainly Not In My Back Yard!" While such insistance provides a good method (leaving aside the "all power corrupts but we need the electricity" problem) for shutting down further nuclear construction and thereby eliminating new nuclear waste, it does not solve the problem that already extant wastes represent to all of us. If you have a suggestion for improvement, fine; but if it's not an improvement, you've made a stupid suggestion.
So, what's your plan for preventing waste release for the next 10000 years?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.