Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Printable Version +- Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora) +-- Forum: Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Environment (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-29.html) +--- Thread: Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' (/thread-10338.html) |
Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Keith Millea - 20-02-2013 YADA YADA YADA These tanks have been known to leak for years and the contamination is slowly getting closer to the "Big River". Published on Wednesday, February 20, 2013 by Common Dreams Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' Senator, governor, environmental groups sound alarm as environmental disaster looms - Andrea Germanos, staff writer As radioactive sludge continues to leak from a storage tank at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington, one senator is slamming the site for posing "unacceptable threat" to the public. (Photo: Tony Case) On Friday, the Energy Department announced that one of the 177 storage tanks at Hanford is leaking up to 300 gallons of radioactive waste a year, prompting Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to visit the site on Tuesday. After touring the site, Wyden said, "This should represent an unacceptable threat to the Pacific Northwest for everybody," the Associated Press reports. [URL="http://columbiariverkeeper.org/"] Columbia Riverkeeper[/URL], an environmental and watchdog group that works to restore the Columbia basin, reacted to news of the leak with alarm. "The great concern is these tanks have the most dangerous waste of all," said Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director of the group, Bloomberg reports. "They were constantly reassuring us that there is no leaking. This announcement is alarming." When news of the leak was announced, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said he was "alarmed" and warned, "We can't just leave 149 single-shell tanks with high-level radioactive liquid and sludge sitting in the ground for decades after their design life." "This news is a sharp remindera wakeup callthat we can't be complacent, or waver in any way, on our nation's commitment to clean up Hanford. I know this is a time of tight budgets, but with an active leak of high-level radioactive material into the environment, money can't be an excuse for inaction," stated Inslee. "There are problems that have to be solved," added Wyden, "and right now the Department of Energy cannot say what changes are needed, when they will be completed and what they will cost." In an interview with PressTV, nuclear scientist Behrad Nakhai said that Hanford "is leaking and it has been leaking for many years. In fact, it is estimated that it has leaked over a million gallons of contaminated radioactive sludge" and produces "one of the most contaminated radioactive materials in the United States that causes alarm for the habitat and environment surrounding this place." The B Reactor at Hanford produced the plutonium for the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945, and legislation has been submitted to make it part of a three-site Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Wyden supports the park proposal, saying, "This is history we ought to preserve" and is "a story that just shouldn't be shunted aside." http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/20-5 Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Jan Klimkowski - 20-02-2013 Grate post, yer old Deadhead! :rockandroll: Here's some more Kafka for you: If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted. Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Peter Lemkin - 20-02-2013 :curtain: Quote: Manhattan Project National Historical ParkHmmm.....maybe Disney will buy into that! Hey, they won't need lights at night....it will glow due to the Cherenkov radiation. hock: We really can all be SO VERY PROUD of the Manhattan Project and all the civilian People it vaporized, killed, made ill due to radiation sickness, cancers, birth defects, and otherwise crippled, etc. :nono: Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Keith Millea - 23-02-2013 They must be using Tepco's PR firm.........hock: Published on Saturday, February 23, 2013 by Common Dreams Now Six - Not One - Hanford Tanks Leaking Radioactive Waste Governor: "This is disturbing news" - Craig Brown, staff writer Six aging, single-walled underground storage tanks are leaking radioactive waste, threatening groundwater below the Hanford nuclear site, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee announced on Friday afternoon. Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation work around a a tank farm where highly radioactive waste is stored underground near Richland, Wash. Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the hemisphere's most contaminated nuclear dump are leaking, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013 (AP Photo/Shannon Dininny) The seeping waste adds to decades of soil contamination caused by leaking storage tanks at Hanford in the past and threatens to further taint groundwater below the Columbia River, officials said. The newly disclosed leaking tanks were revealed by Inslee just a week after the U.S. Energy Department disclosed that radioactive waste was found to be escaping from only one tank at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. "This is disturbing news for all Washingtonians," Inslee said in a statement released by his office. "This certainly raises serious questions about the integrity of all 149 single-shell tanks with radioactive liquid and sludge at Hanford... We received very disturbing news today. I think that we are going to have a course of new action and that will be vigorously pursued in the next several weeks." The Energy Department issued a brief statement acknowledging that six waste tanks were found to be leaking and adding that there was no "immediate" public health risk." The Energy Department said a week ago that declining liquid levels in just one tank at Hanford showed it was leaking at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons per year. The US government built Hanford during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the nuclear bomb. The site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on the Japanese city Nagasaki and continued producing plutonium for the US nuclear arsenal for years. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/23 Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Jan Klimkowski - 23-02-2013 The cost of cleaning up this horror is obscene. My emphasis in bold. Quote:SIX tanks are discovered to be leaking toxic sludge at America's most contaminated nuclear site as officials push for billion dollar clean-up Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Magda Hassan - 23-02-2013 And the Tories are busy pushing for more nuclear in the UK? Meanwhile Germany is dismantling them and there is the example of Fukushima. Even France is having a rethink. Total lack of imagination. And total lack of responsibility to generations to come. Criminal. Even to the point of using the police to infiltrate and persecute environmental groups opposed to being poisoned and their children mutated. Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Keith Millea - 03-04-2013 This is not looking good..... Published on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 by Common Dreams Nuclear Waste Site at Risk of Hydrogen Explosion, Report Warns Following report of leaks, nuclear safety board finds dangerous hydrogen build up in waste holding tanks - Lauren McCauley, staff writer Tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which sits on the Columbia River in Benton County, Washington face dangerous risk of hydrogen build up which could trigger an explosion of radioactive materials, a nuclear safety board announced on Monday. Storage tanks at Hanford Nuclear Reservation (Photo: Philo Nordlund via Flickr) The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board expressed these concerns in a briefing letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who sought the board's review ahead of next week's confirmation hearing for President Obama's Energy Secretary nominee Ernest J. Moniza known nuclear-hawk. The board expressed concern over the potential for hydrogen gas buildup within the underground tanks, particularly those "double wall" tanks which contain the highly radioactive material that was previously pumped out of leaking single-shell tanks. "All the double-shell tanks contain waste that continuously generates some flammable gas," the board said. "This gas will eventually reach flammable conditions if adequate ventilation is not provided." Earlier this year, investigators found six single-shelled underground storage tanks leaking up to 1,000 gallons of radioactive sludge each yeara situation that noted theoretical physicist Michio Kaku called a "ticking time bomb." [URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/02/hanford-nuclear-waste-could-explode_n_3001134.html?utm_hp_ref=green"] According[/URL] to the Associated Press, officials have known about the explosive potential of the hydrogen gas build up and last fall the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recommended additional monitoring and ventilation of the tanks, which federal officials have been working to implement. Federal officials have thus far evaded any long term, sustainable clean up of the 56 million gallons of highly radioactive material currently held at the former Manhattan Project site. During their review, the board also noted that the waste treatment plant, which is currently being constructed for long-term waste disposal, faces serious technical problems which could lead to "chemical explosions, inadvertent nuclear reactions and mechanical breakdowns," the New York Times reports. In an interview Tuesday, Wyden said that the board's experts had raised "a serious question as to whether this plant is going to work at all." "The next Secretary of Energy - Dr. Moniz - needs to understand that a major part of his job is going to be to get the Hanford cleanup back on track, and I plan to stress that at his confirmation hearing next week," Wyden added. _____________________
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-1 Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Jan Klimkowski - 03-04-2013 Quote:In an interview Tuesday, Wyden said that the board's experts had raised "a serious question as to whether this plant is going to work at all." Perhaps Homer Simpson can save the day..... Radioactive Sludge Continues to Leak at Nuclear Site, Posing 'Unacceptable Threat' - Magda Hassan - 03-04-2013 Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Sounds like Homer is already at the wheel.....Quote:In an interview Tuesday, Wyden said that the board's experts had raised "a serious question as to whether this plant is going to work at all." |