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Tunnel Collapses At Nuclear Facility Once Called 'An Underground Chernobyl Waiting To Happen' (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Managers at the Hanford Site in Washington State told workers to "take cover" Tuesday morning after a tunnel leading to a massive plutonium finishing plant collapsed. The emergency is especially worrisome, since Hanford is commonly known as "the most toxic place in America," with one former governor calling it "an underground Chernobyl waiting to happen." Worrisome might actually be an understatement. An emergency has been declared. The accident occurred near the 200 East Area, the home of several solid waste sites. More specifically, the tunnel that collapsed was one filled with highly radioactive train cars that once carried spent fuel rods containing deeply dangerous plutonium and uranium from a reactor on the Columbia River to the processing facility. Those reactors once produced plutonium for America's nuclear arsenal, though production ended in 1980. The cleanup process that followed has gone on for nearly 30 years. Back to the poor workers, though. They've been instructed to stay indoors, and one manager reportedly sent out a message telling workers to "secure ventilation in your building" and "refrain from eating or drinking." When you can't even have a glass of water, you know the nuclear emergency is bad. The U.S. Department of Energy sent out a press release around 1pm EST that said "facility personnel have been evacuated," while workers at nearby sites have been instructed to stay indoors. A spokesperson also told the press that "there was no evidence to suggest that radioactive materials had been released and that all of the workers in the area were accounted for."
How about we don't try to produce energy with the most toxic and deadly materials mankind has ever discovered?
De-funded at the worst time.
A giant lizard like creature has been spotted in the river approaching Portland.
On a news site supposedly devoted to technology and science.
It's not a "Chernobyl waiting to happen" because they're not running the reactor hard to test the safety systems.
They're worried about a release of radiation into the air through the permeability of the tunnel collapse and that's presuming the train cars were damaged in the collapse as well - if there is leakage we're looking at another Three Mile Island (and all the hysteria that went along with that)
The bigger story here is why don't we have a more secure disposal facility for nuclear waste... oh wait... we DID and Harry Reid shut it down so the waste had to stay in this "Chernobyl like" facility.
30 year gig to "clean up" a site. Wish I had founded a company to snag this sweet gig. The profits would have enormous - funding the anti nuke nuts would have been a small portion of the profit margin.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Hanford. I remember friend and I drove to the road adjacent to this property to view the total eclipse in 1979 (wide open flat area). Looks like have to find another location to view total eclipse this August.
mfwright@batnet.com
This is Fake News!
I find the prose and opinion in these kinds of news stories to be annoying. Whether or not I agree or disagree with the bias of this particular story, the "Back to the poor workers, though" bit had me wondering if one of the worker's grandmothers wrote this news or what.
Better known as 318230.
I see a dome for Washington... unfortunately, it's for the wrong Washington.
he United States Department of Energy activated its emergency teams to the Hanford Site.
Thankfully our POTUS appointed a highly qualified and intelligent person with n political agenda to lead the Department of Energy, so we know this will be handled in the safest and most intelligent manner possible.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Like that's the only concern here. Also, they were evacuated with no apparent harm according to the summary. It's obvious what ideology gizmodo operates under.
Seriously. Reads like something from a British tabloid like "The Mirror" or "Daily Mail." BeauHD, why don't you finish secondary school before you pick a job like this?
Did anyone else misread the title as "TRUMP Collapses At Nuclear Facility Once Called 'An Underground Chernobyl Waiting To Happen'"?
I've done engineering work on the site (new storage tanks). This site is a perfect example of how technical neglect or ignorance (the early days of nuclear) combined with entrenched bureaucracy and underfunding of the cleanup project can land you in a giant mess that's difficult (at best) to resolve. Hanford is and was an accident waiting to happen, and it could happen at literally any time, contaminating beyond any reasonable ability to cleanup the entire Columbia river basin when the big accident finally happens. And with current funding and environmental attitudes of the current regime, it's not going to get better.
Good thing we don't use nuclear fission here.
Well, except for the old submarines and naval ships.
Retrofitting them for fusion is only partially under way, mostly for the ones with laser defense systems.
Reminder: if we had stored this radioactive mess under the White House, it wouldn't be an issue.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Wow, what a fear-mongering summary.
"When you can't even have a glass of water, you know the nuclear emergency is bad."
No. Its called following a predefined set of safety protocols for a take cover event. Contrary to popular belief, its better to be safe than sorry until the actual severity and impact of an event is determined.
The lawsuits from not acting vs overreacting are quite dichotomous.
I work a mile from the site border, and connect remotely to the government network there for my job, and have worked on site.
There was no radiological release; no contamination was spread.
Employees were instructed to shut off HVAC and to avoid eating and drinking for several hours; these moratoriums have been lifted.
The site has essentially been evacuated. All non-essential employees have been released for the day. Swing shift cancelled (again, except non-essential personnel).
Can we please stop with the scaremongering? The worst thing about Hanford is that no work ever gets done out there because safety is quite literally job number 1: they've extraordinarily happy that you don't get any work done as long as you're safe not doing it. Hanford's just a huge money sink.
Hell, I didn't even hear about it until my mother in law halfway across the state texted me.
I've been following this situation, and the shelter in place order and early worker release are just sensible precautionary measures. At present there is no reason to expect any release of contamination.
Not that this is exactly a feather in the cap for the site's management; obviously it should never have happened. But the response at least is responsible: when the unexpected happens, you assume more unexpected events are in store until you're sure as sure can be.
What some politician called the site in the past is totally irrelevant to the present situation. This should, however, remind us that we do have a pretty big nuclear waste problem slowly building; and because it's slow we've been kicking the ball down the road and hoping for the best. That isn't a good enough. Unexpected things happen, and even if this event proves to be harmless, as is likely, they don't always happen in harmless ways.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo:
An anonymous reader named mdsolar ;-)
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
The Hanford site is a disaster. That is not hyperbole.
this stinks of mdsolar
Came here for the lectures on how Nuclear Energy is the safest and cleanest.
How it is so much more reliable and green than solar, wind, or hydro
Left disappointed, will check back later.
Do they have a reactor there? What's the plated MW capacity of the operating reactors? Oh wait, they haven't operated a reactor in how long? Evironmental retards.
I live ~60 miles down wind of Hanford, alarms, TV's are all set to alert us of a problem; I read about it on Slashdot. There was no release (at least their story). Local news says to go to www.Hanford.gov
Hanford is commonly known as "the most toxic place in America,"
I think Uber holds that title now.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
All nuclear power station should be shut down, cleaned environmentally (probably not possible :( ), and closed. They should never have been built. In the late sixties and early seventies, I studied to become a nuclear engineer. The more I learned, the more I felt they should not be built. I went another direction rather than participate.
Does this fall under the purvue of the EPA, which has had it's funding slashed, and is currently being run by a guy who is suing his own agency, or does this fall under the DOE, run by Rick Perry, who doesn't even know what his agency does, and once theatened to kill the agency entirely?
Well, with these rocket scientists at the helm, things are sure to get fixed up real quick, because our President only hires the best people -- the best!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
These structures were built in the 1940's or later.
Building a tunnel that lasts indefinitely is not a technology that was hard then or now.
So what actually collapsed and why?
People tend to be scared of nuclear power. Really they're scared of the potential. But where I really feel bad for nuclear is, people look at the state of nuclear in our country and that's all they see it as. Dangerous, old, barely maintained, because we're scared in the first place. When you don't put a lot of money into something it's going to appear worse than it is. And so we'll spend less time maintaining. And so things will go wrong, people will go "I told you so" and we'll move on to open up more coal mining.
Don't let one little typo when I decided to quickly expand the acronym distract you.
The research from that now ancient thing has been built on and improved so it can be filed with Tesla's broadcast power as what looked like a good idea at the time that we now know better than to try to use.