Slashdot Mirror
Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification Plant "Too Dangerous"
Noryungi writes "Scientific American reports, in a chilling story, that the Hanford, Washington nuclear waste vitrification treatment plant is off to a bad start. Bad planning, multiple sources of radioactive waste, and leaking containment pools are just the beginning. It's never a good sign when that type of article includes the word 'spontaneous criticality,' if you follow my drift..."
It seems the main problem is that the waste has settled in distinct layers, and has to be piped through corroded old tubes, leading to all sorts of exciting problems (e.g. enough plutonium aggregating to start a reaction).
Yeah we glow at night around here...
At some point, it would have been cheaper to pay another country to take it away for reprocessing and vitrification, even after considering the obscene cost of safely transporting one barrel at a time to said foreign country and transporting the glass logs back for long term storage.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
is it like the commercial where they blindfold people and they have sex and then take off the blindfold and discover they had sex at a toxic waste dump?
i'd buy that for a dollar
This always happens. Lowest cost + government insurance = safety failure.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And this is why people oppose nuclear power. It's harder to screw things up at such level with renewables. The simpsons greedy bastard running a nuke plant isn't a fiction. It's a damned archetype.
Instead of pointing fingers, let's focus on how to solve this problem...
Like maybe burn all the overzealous anti-nuclear campaigners.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
TFA says the waste has settled into layers, solids at the bottom, and the system they have will mix it all and pump out the sludge.
Wouldn't it be smarter to pump the liquids out first, and worry about the solid part later? They say the most urgent problem is that some tanks are leaking, and solids don't leak.
I don't know if you noticed but the US has been kind of bitchy lately about even our allies like Japan reprocessing their own reactor fuel locally for fear they might make weapons of it. I don't think anybody is going to get an export permit for Hanford's waste, which looks to have more uranium and plutonium in it (of the specific actinides) than is in the US arsenal. Even if they did - just pumping the tanks is almost certain death.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Underpaid, undervalued engineers and operators lead to an environment of low morale and 'give a shit' factor.
Seriously, why don't we just "burn" this? Add it as a contaminant to the fuel rods used in other reactors (or more realistically, since most of the waste comes from spent fuel rods, start recycling the damned things instead of trying to bury them).
All the furor over Yucca or Hanford or wherever, just to honor one of the single most short-sighted executive orders ever issued? Time to tell Carter where to stick his legendarily failed energy policy and move into 20th century tech for handling waste.
Oh, no, you're talking shite, the rare earths (which not all designs need) aren't used up and can be recycled.
And, please, you can't play the "Oh, the poor enviornment" card when you're doing far far worse elsewhere with oil, coal, rare earths (what the fuck do you think is in your mobile phone, retard?), uranium and fracking water.
Seems like stupidity of a high order to me considering this has happened in nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor and even in wartime they were really careful to keep things apart to avoid problems.
thou discernest my thoughts from afar
In 2000, the DoE and Bechtel National, Inc. (the contractor retained to build the Vitrification plant at Hanford) began construction of the plant before the design of the critical elements of the plant had been completed - in fact, before the design of many of those elements had even been started. The goal, to save time and money.
Trying to build a house? No problem... our construction team have built a few of those so they know what to do based on early architectural sketches and teamwork. But this is not a house, it is a vitrification plant for 50+ million gallons of the worst nuclear waste in the world with a total radioactive potential of around 170-180 million curies (Cernobyl released about half that). Oh, and that shit is not only hot radioactively, it is hot temperature-wise too.
Today, 60 of 177 storage tanks are leaking with the rest at a high risk of leaking, and if all goes well the complex to house the worst of the waste after vitrification will be built by 2048, with the whole vitrification process completed by 2062. Unless there are delays... after all, this is a government project, they are good at hitting project deadlines, right?
Each tank is layered, with a relatively solid layer at the bottom, a salt cake above that, then sludge followed by liquid and a gas layer. Sounds a bit like my toilet after a bad Chinese meal... only more of it. Most of the radioactivity is in the solids and sludge whereas most of the volume is in the liquids and the salt cake - you need the liquid to transfer the rest through the crappy piping and filters from the storage tanks to the vitrification plant, and it all has to flow fast enough to keep the solids moving without causing any blockages or radioactive buildups.
To top it all off, the glass mixture used in the vitrification process has to be tailoered to the mixture in the tank, and given the diversity of radioactive processes, materials and production methods in use on site, there will be at least 10 compounts required, with no way of knowing what is in what tank short of analysing the contents and getting a representative sample of everything in the tank.
Simple :-S
To my layman's mind, two things come to mind - 1. The whole thing is a complete clusterfuck, and it will be a miracle if the whole lot does not end very badly. 2, Top priority is to contain the leak in the immediate vicinity, but short of digging some massive trenches and excavating a huge foundation then filling the whole lot with some kind of radioactive-resistant concrete, and doing it in such a way that you can inspect the result for leaks, I cannot see how they are going to manage that.
Time to call in Bruce Willis and get him to start drilling, I guess.
Thorium molten salt reactors are much safer in the short and long term.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Synroc was invented in 1978 and is a much better idea than vitrification.
This is what happens when you are so frightened by a problem that you make it worse than if you had rationally dealt with it from the beginning. Storing the waste from each plant at the original site near populated areas is the worst case scenario for the dealing with this problem. The opposition to the Yucca Mountain facility has become politically irrational to the point of making impossible demands for it safe for millions of years. Thousands of years is completely feasible and just hundreds of years should be perfectly acceptable. All these by products will eventually be valuable resources to a future technology. It is criminal negligence and a national disgrace to keep these wastes in cooling pools and proposed dry casks at the plants where they were produced. One can only hope that rational decisions can be made in time to avert a self fulfilling disaster. The prospects for this look poor.
...when ANY article includes the phrase "spontaneous criticality." Seriously, that's up there with "Honey, something's been bothering me" as a phrase you never, ever want to hear in any context.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Also bear in mind that the waste we're getting to deal with today - the waste that sets the tone about nuclear safety - is the end product of a really dodgy design process done decades ago. We can make safer, cleaner nuclear reactors now, but that's not going to make the slightest bit of difference to our clean-up operations for quite some time.
Nuclear power really screwed itself.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
.
Prior to 2012, plenty of other problems were found at San Onofre: "Problems at nuclear plant concern regulators" in the San Diego Union Tribune covered a few of these which ended up "resulting in the simultaneous shutdown of two safety backup systems and placing operators on standby to shut down a nuclear reactor."
.
In Florida, you've got the hubris of Duke Energy trying to repair a cooling tower on its own using its own idiots rather than hiring people expertly capable of doing things just to save $10M$us (ten million usa dollars) resulting in the total shutdown of the Crystal River nuclear plant until at least 2014 at a total cost of repair projected to be $2.75B$us (2.75 Billion usa dollars): http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/03/01/1894613/nuclear-fiasco-vexes-progress.html : The problems experienced at Crystal River stem from a botched attempt to replace the plant's steam generator. The replacement required cutting a giant hole - measuring 23 feet by 27 feet - in the 42-inch-thick protective wall of the building that contains the nuclear reactor. To save money, Progress opted to manage the project on its own and awarded the contract to an engineering firm that had no experience in such repairs. The work resulted in three instances of "delamination," a term used to describe an internal separation of the building wall. Each delamination is the size of a basketball court, said Florida's Deputy Public Counsel, Charles Rehwinkel. "They were definitely three separate events, or discrete incidents," he said.
.
The blunder shows that a highly experienced nuclear operator with a sterling reputation in the industry is not immune from unforeseen miscues that raise questions about judgment and competence.
The sequence of mistakes has put Progress in a state of crisis management for more than two years. Company officials are dealing with persistent questions from Wall Street analysts while they negotiate data requests from the insurer, Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited, known as NEIL.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/crystal-river-nuclear-plant-had-flaw-in-its-safety-procedures-for-more/1276841 also shows that Crystal River had other serious problems, just like so many other plants that consistently skirt safety regulations and prescribed critical safety procedures:
4 generator failures hit US nuclear plants in in AP article: Four generators that power emergency systems at nuclear plants have failed when needed since April, an unusual cluster that has attracted the attention of federal inspectors and could prompt the industry to re-examine its maintenance plans.and those are just from a quick cursory review from a web search engine. People who look harder can find more. The common link in all of these are shortcuts taken to save money and to bypass conventional procedures which are required to be followed by the NRC.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
http://www.iaea.org/
Union of Concerned Scientists
http://www.ucsusa.org/
The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety
2012 Report.
World Nuclear News
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/
NPUA.org: Nuclear Professionals Union of America
http://www.npua.org/
Canada Nuclear Power Industry Safety
http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
That's just what Harold Finch wants you to think.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I don't believe we can defend our power plants from a determined enemy armed with missiles, drones, or software.
The disruption of defense production with bombs, missiles and drones and environmental pollution that circles the globe make current nuclear designs a non starter for me.
Can we be confident there will never be another world war?
In case anyone wants to use this incident to bash nuclear power, it's worth noting that Hanford was not a civilian nuclear power plant. It was a U.S. Government owned and operated site that produced plutonium for nuclear warheads. The military wasn't required to follow any kind of environmental or safety standards for most of the site's lifetime, and they didn't.
Your government didn't want reactors producing energy, they wanted reactors producing material for nuclear weapons. The energy was just a nice bi-product, and now you're all stuck with the waste products. I'm so happy this shit is sitting in the USA and not anywhere else in the world. Just another cost for the often touted Freedom.
The DOE really has no incentive to finish this boon-doogle Hanford Vitrification..a protracted government/corporate sweetheart project in this case (Bechtel Engineering who is not engineering company of 40 years ago) a project involving large numbers of people (mostly engineers since they've been 'redesigning this project for 30years spending Billion$) the mother load of usually heavy expenditures---forever. ....and never get anything built. It pays to bribe politicians!!
just like it's cheaper to have India dismantle old asbestos boats: because they do it without regard to worker safety. It's pretty clear from just the summary let alone TFA that the problem here is the company that got the contract did everything on the cheap for as much profit as possible. If there's a problem with nuclear power it's that as soon as profit motive and corporations gets involved they first thing they do is slash safety to boost revenue.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Tell me again about the nuclear power station that could respond to demand?
Didn't think so, stupid motherfucker.
Tell me again about the nuclear power station that never went down?
Didn't think so, stupid motherfucker.
Tell me again about the "huge power" required for minimum generation (the only necessary "baseload")? And when you do, why it can't be solved by renewable generation?
Didn't think so, stupid motherfucker.
We have long been told that science had nuclear technology in the bag, be it for military or civilian use. Of course, at the same time "scientists" have told us there was no link between smoking and cancer, or, more recently, between human activities and global warming.
It is little wonder that the public distrusts scientists, (unless, of course, they say what the public wants to hear), for many put their integrity up for sale. To paraphrase Twain, "There are lies, damned lies, and science." It is truly sad for those who recognize the importance of scientific integrity.
I oppose nuclear power because even if the technology itself is completely safe, it requires management by human beings who inevitably corrupt and break the technology for any of a dozen different reasons. Everything from short term greed to impressing a girl friend, to simple curiosity about whether the backup safety features will really work if we push this button....
There is nothing at all wrong with nuclear technology if we only had a race of supermen to do it for us.
Will
If any "waste" material is still energetic enough to cause concern then it hasn't been fully utilized and converted into electricity. Thanks to the Carter administration, the term "spent fuel" was replaced by "nuclear waste". U.S. power stations only consume 1% of the energy in the fuel. Then it's deemed "waste". If the spent fuel was recycled to produce 100 times more carbon-free energy, then the waste would be no more dangerous than the ore dug out of the ground after 200 years.
Still, this policy keeps the uranium mining industry in business and as an Australian I should be happy...
Nobody has died from falling. Impact with the ground? Yes, but not falling.
Nobody has died from being shot, they've died from blood loss.
And radiation doesn't kill quickly. So asserting "no deaths" is just plain bollocks.
Tell you what, you go and buy up at the market rate of elsewhere in Japan the land and make use of it.
The Machine was stored there but now it's just a big empty warehouse.
That the human race should just call it a day, we're just not up to this (one time, pretty nasty) task of cleanup?
The article does show that they're aware of the dangers and are dealing with the problems --- and we will learn quite a bit about these materials in the process. As we must.
If everyone is too timid, perhaps they could approach the people who milk rattlesnakes day after day to obtain the venom that is desperately sought for medical research. They probably do it with a minimum of dramatic fanfare, a sensible appreciation of risk and an appropriate dash of humor.
It is possible to isotopically separate people into two distinct groups. Those who will just dig into the problem taking common sense precautions with the goal of vitrifying all of this dangerous material. There is risk and for that risk they should be amply rewarded.
And those on the sidelines who are secretly hoping for some cataclysmic disaster to occur, something exciting and scary to bring the fulfillment of hopping in circles saying I told you so. The commercial nuclear power industry in America has cheated these people of their Pyrrhic victory for decades, quietly operating at peak efficiency and responsibly (though not appropriately) storing and watching over their waste pools.
Jimmy Carter has been adequately taken to task in this thread for his decision to take the United States back into a 'dark age' of nuclear ignorance. But he was just channeling the Jane Fonda crowd.
Admiral Rickover is another person who should carry blame. He presided directly over the Atoms For War program but even that does not arouse my ire so much as he directly sabotaged research and development of safer and more sustainable nuclear technology.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Compared to the non-renewables, though, it's a step up. We just have to stop bitching and moaning and realize that first-generation nuclear tech NEEDS to be dealt with, much like we had to deal with our use of lead and DDT when those turned out to be "problematic."
Calling modern nuclear tech "bad" because we're too lazy and frightened of the old tech is tantamount to handing the problem off to someone else. It doesn't matter WHO is running the aging, decrepit plants. WE have to do something about it. But because we're against the only viable replacement - modern nuclear - we're forcing them to keep the old ones active.
It's a costly problem. But let's not pretend we have a "renewable" solution just yet. We have a better incremental step in the meantime that we're not using because we're big crybabies. The only ones who win in that situation are the Mr. Burns of the world.
with great power comes great responsibility.
of course i don't know anything about "cleaning" nuclear waste, .. down.
but maybe if they dig a shaft DOWN and process the sh1t at the bottom, at least
this way it will flow for free
no pump needed. like a inverse crude oil refinery.
then again, we can just leave it there and declare -ala- microsoft changing light bulbs,
"That darkness is the new standard", or in this case "that NOT being
radioactive is just abnormal".
then again i wonder how the soldier who got saved by "the bomb(tm)" would feel
about their off-spring being "wasted"...
It's absolutely perfect; except that every single implementer has fucked up horribly.
But it'll work next time!
I'd say I good start is for people to get they frakin' UNITS right!
quantifying energy in megawatt-hours (or khw like most bills) is like quantifying distance in 60 mph hours - "how far is Charlotte from Atlanta?" "oh, about four sixty mile per hour hours..."
although in this case generator capacity is determined by peak velocity which I think they call "power" & is typically expressed in (k/m/g) watts so the more proper way to state your point would be "the trick is to figure out how to reduce the average peak kilowatt load per house".
FWIW, I completely agree w/your actual point but incorrect units are a pet peeve of mine! (just be glad you didn't say something WEIGHS x kilograms! :D )
one quote... " although the current risks are real, they are unlikely and would be of low magnitude if they did occur." same old crap that has been put on a rubber stamp and whacked down on every paper ever associated with nuclear energy.
in virtually every case, that blind faith has been proven to be bullshit someplace in the world.
which is the reason Hanford Worls' site is purely and evilly contaminated, with the worst yet to come.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Well, that is a fine mess. Some of the first plutonium from Hanford was put in the Fat Man bomb, used to kill women, children and other civilians in Nagasaki. Today, the air, water and soil of Nagasaki is fresh and clean, unlike in Hanford. With an imminent environmental disaster of epic proportions, it seems you are about to reap what you sowed.
Greetings from Nagasaki.
Thus far 217 comments. It's difficult to believe that there are 217 people in the entire world with reasonable knowledge of the subject matter. Oh for the days when people were smarter, or braver, or just plain more determined. Even if we all can't agree what should be done with the Hanford facility, it would be nice nice as a country to have the option/ability to do something other than nothing.
Sounds more like a heating story.
Most of those leaky tanks are full of leftover waste from 40's-60's military projects and nobody has any good idea what's in them. They have remote monitors for radioactivity and temperature, but mostly people stay as far away from them as possible. As anyone who's been there knows they have three alarms 1) evacuate 2) shelter in place and 3) you are going to die and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
plutonium or something...
Oh, wait...
Isn't it grand that Obama more or less PERSONALLY killed the Yucca Mountain storage facility for purely political reasons just before it was ready to start accepting high level waste (and after already spending around $60 billion on the project).
They could have (slowly) emptied all of Handford's corroding holding tanks and eventually not have this problem. However, this is going to be handled just like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill with the congressmen wringing their hands and trying to find a way of using the leaks against their political rivals while the Columbia river gets contaminated. With southern Washington, northern Oregon, and western Idaho all having to be evacuated like the Chernobyl area was.
Which is exactly the problem that synroc was devised to solve and why it's taken so long to test. It's about encorporating any reactive element into it's structure instead of just wrapping stuff up in a glass and hoping that you can put it in a dry enough place where water won't leach stuff out over time.
It's a very cool idea that was poorly funded for years due to idiot fanboys counterproductively insisting that nuclear was "clean". Their bullshit actually delayed turning their dreams into reality.
While forged on this time, the particular Lakers Ultra-luxury-F4 is becoming the particular largest joke while in the story belonging to the NBA, while there is absolutely no very much the same brutally swept the particular Lakers initial circular belonging to the playoffs, Bryant prior to a playoffs begin, Bryant claimed beneficial technology Playoffs Top-notch Top-notch variant belonging to the Kobe Technique Top-notch "GC" or maybe go to the particular gathering. The particular internet real lower price Nike garments plus slippers center additionally Jordan 9 For Sale at the first try, introduced people a brilliant boots. Formerly the particular label Kobe Bryant 8-10 seven TECHNIQUE, because using innovative elements has Vamp technology nylon uppers people your surprise, this kind of can be playoff Top-notch Top-notch discharge involving variant get people every surprises? Enable small that will preference.
Nike Kobe Technique Top-notch 8-10, the particular initial designed mesh uppers time frame in equally attributes belonging to the forefoot boosts the active Flywire soar brand help. Shoelaces exact same materials, the particular us going for Kevlar? Kevlar fibers materials, which in turn is usually a sturdy durability belonging to the materials, with using active soar brand, tighten the particular laces ft will be securely set while in the sneakers inside of. The particular Top-notch variant belonging to the return towards the underlying part Bryant boots throughout the hands belonging to the conventional Soar Surroundings cushioning involving the start that will ending up elasticity get pleasure from class inner thoughts. Considered one of an important components belonging to the heel sneakers, Nike Kobe Technique Top-notch thorough protection was with implantation with co2 fibers a lot increased.
Your significant improvement belonging to the Nike Kobe Technique Top-notch Playoffs Top-notch Variation expected, while Kobe Bryant has become the particular industry owing to injury, however When i eventually left quick think that is merely a short do future time, Bryant staged certain return belonging to the king, more basketball experience the royal This kind of webpage calls for the particular return belonging to the heroes, pertaining to many of us embraced expectation.
Nike currently unveiled a couple special coloring Surroundings Utmost Carmelo Anthony Shoes 180 EM sneakers, furthermore towards the more breathable useful cloth mesh kept up to date form our body involving the particular black-jack shoe shape, Chris Paul Shoes characterized because the particular higher part which includes a full azure, magenta, apple a few fantasy shades, motivated by way of Rio de Janeiro beach front form grabbed the particular awareness involving every person yet again your elegant coloring, at this time there can be not any specific give maturation, interested friends may wish to improvement a number of a blueprint. Nike Sportsmen will be inspired that will open your bodys pure habit (pure motions) that will activate the most effective specific sport functionality. NIKE ZERO COST compilation of analog that will don sneakers barefoot sense slightly curved full grooves through a special lone presents sportsmen more flexibleness, however and to the particular most rudimentry protection with any time to aid the particular sportsmen that will sportsmen, their own very own work out the particular muscle mass belonging to the lower limbs plus ft. In Walk in 2010 the particular kick off belonging to the Nike Zero cost five. 0 Nike Flywire (soar brand technological know-how, Nike) the ideal package deal plus foot or so ribbon and bow, having fantastic suit sense.
Folk need to "Man up".
This is a real issue -- and the key problem is that too many want a 100% guarantee.
I cannot for the life of me understand why the repository in Nevada never happened. Even if material was lain in sand inside concrete coffins as a 25 year solution in contrast to the life of the universe. Not too different than the thousand year old burial tunnels hand dug in the tufo outside of Rome (Catacombs of Rome).
Those that want a permanent solution are missing the boat big time. As we are seeing from the problems in Japan on site storage is not ideal. The material needs to be moved into a physically safe location. Transport can be in serious reinforced vaults on rail.
Robots today could make audit and security safer. Robots could operate and monitor the tunnels relentlessly.
There are other mountains that would make for good 25-50 year vaults as well.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.