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Report Says Radioactive Monitors Failed at Nuclear Plant (apnews.com)
A new report says mistakes and mismanagement are to blame for the exposure of workers to radioactive particles at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. From the report: Contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation on Thursday released its evaluation of what went wrong in December during demolition of the nuclear reservation's highly contaminated Plutonium Finishing Plant. The Tri-City Herald reports the study said primary radioactive air monitors used at a highly hazardous Hanford project failed to detect contamination. Then, when the spread of contamination was detected, the report said steps taken to contain it didn't fully work.
At least 11 Hanford workers checked since mid-December inhaled or ingested small amounts of radioactive particles. Private and government vehicles were contaminated with radioactive particles. The sprawling site in southeastern Washington contains more than 50 million gallons of radioactive and toxic wastes in underground storage tanks. It's owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, which hires private contractors to manage the cleanup work. Hanford was established during World War II and made the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The 560-square mile site also made most of the plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.
At least 11 Hanford workers checked since mid-December inhaled or ingested small amounts of radioactive particles. Private and government vehicles were contaminated with radioactive particles. The sprawling site in southeastern Washington contains more than 50 million gallons of radioactive and toxic wastes in underground storage tanks. It's owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, which hires private contractors to manage the cleanup work. Hanford was established during World War II and made the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The 560-square mile site also made most of the plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.
"Nuclear plant" makes it seem like it's a nuclear power plant. The nuclear power industry in the US has been extremely safe, and subject to extreme safeguards, to the point of unprofitability.
No, Hanford is a former military plutonium production facility, dating from the early 1940s -- things were done hastily at first due to WW2, then without good oversight and often without knowing better. They made a hell of a radioactive mess that will take decades to clean up, assuming we can find a place to put the waste (WIPP in NM needs to open).
If you're on the West Coast and worry about Fukushima, stop worrying, and start worrying about Hanford. If an old tank full of 50 year old radwaste (which is often nitrate-based, and thus also explosive) fails, it will be nasty.
If your monitors are radioactive, safely dispose of them and buy new ones!
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You look absolutely radiant today
The Transatomic design doesn't do anything yet, and clean nuclear energy is always 10 years away. Also, Leslie Dewan is mostly famous for being famous at this point. She's the engineering equivalent of a Kardashian until she actually gets one of her products to market.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Alpha emitters (like Plutonium) are generally a non-issue for practical purposes. You might get cancer 30 years from now if the stuff is in your lungs. Or not. But no acute effects.
Betas are worse, but I can't think of anything that should be emitting betas in a nuclear facility.
Now gammas are, relatively speaking, killers. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any gamma-emitters associated with nuclear power, but we're not really talking nuclear power here, we're talking nuclear weapon production. Which takes a special kind of reactor, with its own, special, problems....
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How can you decontaminate a nuclear waste site, and not have functioning radiation detection?
Wouldn't you think there would have to be 100 different monitors around the area between workers, and equipment, the existing facility monitors, and safety systems for the area?
See, there's the problem: They should have bought regular monitors, not radioactive ones. They tend to decay over time.
For a moment I thought the headline read “Report Says Radioactive Monsters Failed at Nuclear Plant”.
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But the monitors did not detect airborne contamination in December, possibly because some of the particles that spread were too heavy to stay aloft.
They are calling it a "failure" of the airborne particle detectors to detect particles that were not in the air. If the particles are not in the air then people aren't going to breathe them in. It might collect on the soles of their boots but if they are licking the soles of their boots then they need to be checked for mental issues first, then radiation contamination second.
It sounds like there were failures in managing the spread of radioactive material but this mention of a "failure" of airborne particle detectors is not one of them.
Radiation is everywhere and if we are going to regulate its spread then we need to have sane regulations. If Grand Central Station were a nuclear power plant then it would be shutdown for exceeding the annual acceptable dose of radiation for employees.
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We need to take another look at our regulation of radioactive material. If it is as dangerous as the law says it is then we need to close off Grand Central Station and declare it a superfund site. If Grand Central Station is in fact safe to inhabit then so should any other place with an equivalent level of radioactivity.
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