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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
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.
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.
The damage has already happened. The way to deal with this going forward is simple...... Tons and tons of pumped concrete. Keep pumping into the crater caused by collapse, until there is no longer a hole, then pump in more tons to create a 5ft slab over the top of the tunnel
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 biggest issues I have with nuclear, apart from safety concerns around handling spent fuel, is that it is extremely expensive way to produce energy, and it isn't in fact renewable. It is reliant, at least at the moment, on digging up radioactive minerals like pitchblende out of the ground, so in that respect you're still left finding sources of fuel, whether that be primary sources like mining it, or secondary sources like enriched uranium and plutonium originally meant for or made into nuclear weapons.
So perhaps it solves a short-term solution, seeing as CO2 emissions-wise, it's clean, but in the long term it still leaves behind a pretty damned nasty form of waste, and is still using a finite resource.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The way to deal with this going forward is simple...... Tons and tons of pumped concrete. Keep pumping into the crater caused by collapse, until there is no longer a hole, then pump in more tons to create a 5ft slab over the top of the tunnel
Can we at least pump in fracking fluid, instead of concrete? Then we could get some natural gas out of the deal.
Although, instead of the neighbors' tap water just burning . . . it will come roaring out as a thermonuclear plasma reaction!
That would be cool.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The idea that concrete can contain such waste is absurd, and Chernobyl demonstrates that. Concrete is not some sort of an impermeable layer. Apart from the fact that it's possible the decay of whatever is down in that tunnel will probably eat at the concrete over time, concrete is vulnerable to water damage, and more importantly to cracking. Ask anyone who has poured a concrete slab, if you don't have stable soil and fill beneath a slab, and if you don't put control joints into a slab, it will crack. That's not even talking about other potential issues like frost heave or the potential that such waste could still find its way out of its "tomb" and into the water table.
Dumping tons of concrete into the hole is not a long term solution. I wouldn't even call it a medium term solution, and doing it will likely complicate future cleanup or containment.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nuclear fuel gets recycled and a significant chunk of the waste that comes out of a reactor goes back into a reactor eventually. We could use breeder reactors that wind up creating more fissile material than they actually use as input, but we don't, because that's also a great way to get material for nuclear warheads.
If push really comes to shove, after all of the fossil fuels are spent and all the good solar spots are taken (and assuming fusion remains a dream), we really can power humanity on nuclear energy for at least a few thousand years. Assuming our species even lives that long and we don't get wiped out or wipe ourselves out first.
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
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.
Nuclear to left of me, Hydros to the right, and Wind to the rear. Of the triad, Hdyo has been producing panic free all of my life - not a blight on the hemisphere and a place to take your family for a tour. It's the Salmon that will take those down.
As pointed out, this is the result of weapons production, not power.
I operated 100N at Hanford, we supplied surplus steam to an electrical company next door, They got 20% (on a very good day), we dumped the rest; it was all about Plutonium.
Hanford is commonly known as "the most toxic place in America,"
I think Uber holds that title now.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
This is not a nuclear power plant. It is a wast dump from cold war activities. How stupid to say it is another Chernobyl waiting to happen. That screams ignorance.
possible the decay of whatever is down in that tunnel will probably eat at the concrete over time
Yeah...isn't that what caused this collapse?
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.
This is the problem with nuclear power: people hate it so much they'll lump in everything with it, relevant or not. This is all about weapons production waste. You might as well blame solar energy for the majority of gun deaths because most shootings are done with the aid of sunlight to see.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It wouldn't surprise me, though even normal erosion can take concrete out. Up here in Canada we've seen a lot of concrete bridges and overpasses undermined by the use of salt and brine sprays to keep roads and highways clear in winter.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Tons and tons of pumped concrete.
Isn't that exactly what just failed?
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.
That's exactly the point, though. The insoluble problem with Nuclear Power isn't outdated reactor designs - it's the tons of highly radioactive waste products that need to be stored for decades in systems that are themselves complex and subject to failure.
And those improved reactors we've yet to see in practice will still keep churning out the stuff.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
That is incorrect. ALL concrete cracks. It's just a matter of how big the cracks are. Concrete is in no way impermeable, it just typically leaks at a rate well below that of evaporation of what it is containing. If you want impermeable, you're looking at welded metal which is what this stuff is currently stored in. Sadly welded metal is typically carbon steel which degrades over time and radioactive waste is particularly corrosive...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
That's exactly the point, though. The insoluble problem with Nuclear Power isn't outdated reactor designs - it's the tons of highly radioactive waste products that need to be stored for decades in systems that are themselves complex and subject to failure.
And those improved reactors we've yet to see in practice will still keep churning out the stuff.
More ignorance. The waste issues at Hanford are all the nasty stuff that was never properly handled to begin with. Liquids and chemical used for defense research and production. Spent fuel is nowhere near the problem, it is actually quite easy to manage. Unfortunately, most people can't differentiate between the two. That, coupled with ignorance about radiation risk, leads us to failure when it comes to real carbon reduction. No power source has come close to nuclear in reducing carbon contributions. But alas, ignorance and fear rule. We must do away with our most effective clean air power source.
Not "insoluble", but "unsolved". With the arguable exception of Finland, no country I'm aware of has implemented a deliberately designed long-term strategy for handling and storing long-half-life high level waste. NIMBYism has shot down every other half-way serious attempt at building a long-term solution, from Yucca Mountain to Drigg.
You've got me wondering what the French do now.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
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.