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USA’s ‘Blue Ribbon’ Nuclear Waste Commission at Hanford

Even if Yucca had opened as planned 10 years ago, it would not have enough space for all of Hanford’s wastes,……there is no final resting place for these “vitrified” wastes……..

A Watchdog’s Warning on Nuclear Waste, NYTimes.com, By MATTHEW L. WALD, July 12, 2010,  “…. a new report suggests that Hanford has a lot more plutonium waste that the Energy Department had acknowledged.This week, a blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste established to seek alternatives to Yucca will hold two days of hearings near Hanford. And one of the experts giving testimony will be Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, which describes itself as a watchdog group focused on Hanford.

Mr. Pollet’s prepared testimony argues that Hanford has deeper problems than the possible demise of Yucca Mountain. Even if Yucca had opened as planned 10 years ago, it would not have enough space for all of Hanford’s wastes, he argues. The Energy Department is trying to build a factory at Yucca that will take liquid wastes and mix them with molten glass to produce a solid, as a factory at another bomb plant in South Carolina is already doing. But at the moment, there is no final resting place for these “vitrified” wastes……..

Heart of America’s main argument is that wastes already buried or dumped at Hanford will, by the government’s own projections, begin turning up in the Columbia River or in underground water supplies at levels hundreds of times higher than drinking water standards in centuries and millenniums to come, and that with no plan in place to clean up that material, the department should not bury any more……..

The lesson, Mr. Pollet warns, is that “reprocessing creates vast amounts of liquid high-level nuclear wastes.’’

A Watchdog’s Warning on Nuclear Waste – Green Blog – NYTimes.com

July 13, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, plutonium, radiation, radioactive, uranium, water