6 leaking tanks are Hanford nuke site's latest woe
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Federal and state officials say six underground tanks holding a brew of radioactive and toxic waste are leaking at the country's most contaminated nuclear site in south-central Washington, raising concerns about delays for emptying the aging tanks.
The leaking materials at Hanford Nuclear Reservation pose no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take perhaps years for the chemicals to reach groundwater, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.
But the news has renewed discussion over delays for emptying the tanks, which were installed decades ago and are long past their intended 20-year life span.
"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," said Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."
Just last week, state officials announced that one of Hanford's 177 tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven't detected higher radioactivity levels.
Inslee then traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss the problem with federal officials, learning in meetings Friday that six tanks are leaking.
The declining waste levels in the six tanks were missed because only a narrow band of measurements was evaluated, rather than a wider band that would have shown the levels changing over time, Inslee said.
"It's like if you're trying to determine if climate change is happening, only looking at the data for today," he said. "Perhaps human error, the protocol did not call for it. But that's not the most important thing at the moment. The important thing now is to find and address the leakers."
Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and that federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.
Regardless, Sen. Ron Wyden, the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford's tank monitoring and maintenance program, said his spokesman, Tom Towslee.
The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The remote site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and continued supporting the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal for years.
Today, it is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, still surrounded by sagebrush but with Washington's Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco several miles downriver.
Several years ago, workers at Hanford completed two of three projects deemed urgent risks to the public and the environment, removing all weapons-grade plutonium from the site and emptying leaky pools that held spent nuclear fuel just 400 yards from the river.
But successes at the site often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges. Nowhere have those challenges been more apparent than in Hanford's central plateau, home to the site's third most urgent project: emptying the tanks.
Hanford's tanks hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste - enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools - and many of those tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid has already leaked there.
The cornerstone of emptying the tanks is a treatment plant that will convert the waste into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The plant, last estimated to cost more than $12.3 billion, is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule. It isn't expected to being operating until at least 2019.
Washington state is imposing a "zero-tolerance" policy on radioactive waste leaking into the soil, Inslee said. So given those delays and the apparent deterioration of some of the tanks, the federal government will have to show that there is adequate storage for the waste in the meantime, he said.
"We are not convinced of this," he said. "There will be a robust exchange of information in the coming weeks to get to the bottom of this."
Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, both Democrats, have championed building additional tanks to ensure safe storage of the waste until the plant is completed.
Wyden, D-Ore., toured the site earlier this week. He said he shares the governors' concerns about the integrity of the tanks but he wants more scientific information to determine it's the correct way to spend scarce money.
Wyden noted the nation's most contaminated nuclear site - and the challenges associated with ridding it of its toxic legacy - will be a subject of upcoming hearings and a higher priority in Washington, D.C.
The federal government already spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup - one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The Energy Department has said it expects funding levels to remain the same for the foreseeable future, but a new Energy Department report released this week calls for annual budgets of as much as $3.5 billion during some years of the cleanup effort.
There are legal, moral and ethical considerations to cleaning up the Hanford site at the national level, Inslee said, adding that he will continue to insist that the Energy Department completely clean up the site.
___
Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
The leaking materials at Hanford Nuclear Reservation pose no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take perhaps years for the chemicals to reach groundwater, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.
But the news has renewed discussion over delays for emptying the tanks, which were installed decades ago and are long past their intended 20-year life span.
"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," said Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."
Just last week, state officials announced that one of Hanford's 177 tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven't detected higher radioactivity levels.
Inslee then traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss the problem with federal officials, learning in meetings Friday that six tanks are leaking.
The declining waste levels in the six tanks were missed because only a narrow band of measurements was evaluated, rather than a wider band that would have shown the levels changing over time, Inslee said.
"It's like if you're trying to determine if climate change is happening, only looking at the data for today," he said. "Perhaps human error, the protocol did not call for it. But that's not the most important thing at the moment. The important thing now is to find and address the leakers."
Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and that federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.
Regardless, Sen. Ron Wyden, the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford's tank monitoring and maintenance program, said his spokesman, Tom Towslee.
The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The remote site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and continued supporting the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal for years.
Today, it is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, still surrounded by sagebrush but with Washington's Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco several miles downriver.
Several years ago, workers at Hanford completed two of three projects deemed urgent risks to the public and the environment, removing all weapons-grade plutonium from the site and emptying leaky pools that held spent nuclear fuel just 400 yards from the river.
But successes at the site often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges. Nowhere have those challenges been more apparent than in Hanford's central plateau, home to the site's third most urgent project: emptying the tanks.
Hanford's tanks hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste - enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools - and many of those tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid has already leaked there.
The cornerstone of emptying the tanks is a treatment plant that will convert the waste into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The plant, last estimated to cost more than $12.3 billion, is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule. It isn't expected to being operating until at least 2019.
Washington state is imposing a "zero-tolerance" policy on radioactive waste leaking into the soil, Inslee said. So given those delays and the apparent deterioration of some of the tanks, the federal government will have to show that there is adequate storage for the waste in the meantime, he said.
"We are not convinced of this," he said. "There will be a robust exchange of information in the coming weeks to get to the bottom of this."
Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, both Democrats, have championed building additional tanks to ensure safe storage of the waste until the plant is completed.
Wyden, D-Ore., toured the site earlier this week. He said he shares the governors' concerns about the integrity of the tanks but he wants more scientific information to determine it's the correct way to spend scarce money.
Wyden noted the nation's most contaminated nuclear site - and the challenges associated with ridding it of its toxic legacy - will be a subject of upcoming hearings and a higher priority in Washington, D.C.
The federal government already spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup - one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The Energy Department has said it expects funding levels to remain the same for the foreseeable future, but a new Energy Department report released this week calls for annual budgets of as much as $3.5 billion during some years of the cleanup effort.
There are legal, moral and ethical considerations to cleaning up the Hanford site at the national level, Inslee said, adding that he will continue to insist that the Energy Department completely clean up the site.
___
Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Hopefully people in and around don't end up like Coldwater Creek.
https://www.facebook.com/download/422615891146327/January%2020%202013%20DISEASE%20FIGURES.xlsx
www.facebook.com/groups/217215444963933/
For the last 40 years, they have been saying the same things, the tanks are leaking, sounds like the sky is falling. The seem to do this when they run out of money as usual. Anything to get the public excited. Why would you put tanks in the ground that are only good for 20 years? The radioactive material has a half life of 50,000 years?
Mr. Inslee, How does climate change have a damn thing to do with this problem? First off, it is the federal governments job to clean this up at their expense not ours. We produced this crap for them. Why haven't they been checking all the containment tanks especially since they have out lived their lives and are no longer safe. One would think with all the experts we have in this country that someone could design a tank that don't leak or degrade in such a short period of time and if it we known (which it was) the life span of these tanks that they would have backups ready to go when needed. Your tax dollars hard at work once again. I'm sorry, I forgot we are dealing with the feds. Everything will be just fine,,,don't worry.
Any radioactive contaminant leaking from storage is a grave concern. Especially in the process of 'cleaning up' such waste. The danger should not be couched in it being far from ground water. Such leakage is never far enough away.Â
Remember when the citizenry would be concerned about the federal debt? Largely dismissed now. Such concerns are now being put off until tomorrow. We have a phrase - quoting our president, "kicking the can down the road." Â How appropriate.
Where is Dixie Lee Ray now? Someone needs to kick her heiny....
@bagsofdirt  The issues at Hanford predate Ms. Ray's involvement with the AEC byÂ
decades. About 1/3 of the earlier 66 single walled nuclear waste storage tanks wereÂ
found to be leaking and the nuclear waste from still in them was supposed to be moved
into new double walled tanks. She moved into a position that already had the problems
of deep do-do from the get-go.
Are the new double walled tanks now leaking too.
The release on nuclear contamination has been occurring and been an ongoing issue
every since the facility opened to build the second nuclear bomb that was droppedÂ
on Japan.-------SOS-DD.
Ann Coulter says that stuff is good for you, she'll probably be moving there soon.
Yucca Mountain was investigated for over 30 years as a nuclear waste repository, which would have accepted the Hanford nuclear waste. Obama promised to close Yucca Mountain in is 2008 campaign and he did so in 2010. So now everything must restart, cost more money and take more time.
I guess the western half of Washington state didn't really care about Hanford when they voted for Obama. A pity Eastern Washington cannot move much of the nuclear waste to someplace in King County.
The big question is will the crap reach the river first or will our country collapse first? We have spent huge sums of money and haven't done much and haven't got much for the money spent and more money will not fix the problem. Â
WE ARE BROKE PEOPLE so lets see who can come up with a real plan and a method of fixing this mess without wasting more money.
@swan There have been issues clear back to before 1945 with radioactiveÂ
contaminants in the Columbia River. Back then there were blatant plannedÂ
releases of tons of Iodine 133 into both the atmosphere, and the river. Â
There are contaminants that are already seeping into the river from previousÂ
tank leakages and operational errors, but the current concern is what scientist
call a huge bloom that has formed under the facility and that LARGE massÂ
of contaminated liquid is moving toward the Columbia now. Â
If/When it reaches the river, all downriver life including humans will possiblyÂ
be subject to dangerous, or lethal doses of radiation.
When one considers the fact that the Columbia River flows into the PacificÂ
Ocean at the rate of about 200,000 cubic feet per second, it then becomesÂ
apparent that coastal cities will also share the radioactive contaminantÂ
dangers as well as the cities located on the river properÂ
As far as is known, Hanford has now been given the dubious title of ofÂ
the most polluted site known in the world. Â
There may be sites that are more contaminated by radiation than HanfordÂ
in China, or Russia, but they have not reported or revealed any of theirÂ
nuclear storage sites contamination levels or issues. Â
What do you want to bet Inslee's business friends and envirmelist will have to take charge and clean up the mess for lets see I thinks its called a kick back like when he was in local government helping himself to tax dollars. What fools vote in Washington Si.
The sad part is we're just hearing about this.... reality tells me they knew for a long time..   :(
Anyone ever check out the submarines out there....??????
This stuff leaking is the most toxic and foul stuff ever produced by man. and even though we know its toxic and radioactive, we should have known 60 yearrs ago, it would eat though anything you put it in. Besides we cannot get a reading on exactly is in those tanks. So fire up the glassification furnance and make it storeable and bury the dang stuff already.....stop the studing and get on with the program.....
Please note how extreme enviormentalist politicians who have not worked in the public sector for who knows how long are making these comments. They are biased! It would also help if you wouln't hire the cheapest company to oversee the work. Might want to consider hiring a qualified company!