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Six of Hanford's Nuclear Waste Tanks Leaking Badly
SchrodingerZ writes "A recent review of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state (where the bulk of Cold War nuclear material was created) has found that six of its underground storage tanks are leaking badly. Estimations say each tank is leaking 'anywhere from a few gallons to a few hundred gallons of radioactive material a year.' Washington's governor, Jay Inslee, said in a statement on Friday, 'Energy officials recently figured out they had been inaccurately measuring the 56 million gallons of waste in Hanford's tanks.' The Hanford cleanup project has been one of the most expensive American projects for nuclear cleanup. Plans are in place to create a treatment plant to turn the hazardous material into less hazardous glass (proposed to cost $13.4 billion), but for now officials are trying just to stop the leaking from the corroded tanks. Today the leaks do not have an immediate threat on the environment, but 'there is [only] 150 to 200 feet of dry soil between the tanks and the groundwater,' and they are just five miles from the Colombia River."
No it isn't, with even a cursory look into the situation. Yucca mountain was for spent fuel rods from commercial plants. This disaster area is the leftover crap from reprocessing fuel to extract the Plutonium. Yucca mountain was primarily for commercial reactors - this was a government-run site.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yucca Mountain was designed to store wastes AFTER they had been immobilized and put in long-term storage casks.
The problem here is that they haven't even started that first step. This is still millions of gallons of raw liquid waste, in a state that is totally unsuitable for interstate transport and burial. If Yucca Mountain were up and running today, it wouldn't help this problem one bit.
If they actually took the initiative to solidify this waste now and put it in casks, they could safely store it on site for decades or centuries, just like they're currently doing with commercial reactor waste. They don't need something like Yucca Mountain to address the current risks.
You're cynical about congress. But, people really don't vote for these issues in any kind of numbers. Not when there are much more important single wedge issues to get irate about. Also, people don't want to be informed about this until it starts retarding babies or dramatically increasing cancer rates. And then, they seem to only think it happens to them when it happens to them.
I much more blame the electorate than congress for this lack of attention. If we took a million people to the capital building, or wrote a million letters, or even wrote a million emails, we might get some attention paid to this issue.
Z