New plan to clean up Hanford radioactive site

Feds adopt plans for disposing of nuclear waste Seattle Pi, By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press, December 12, 2013 SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy intends to retrieve nearly all the highly radioactive waste stored in underground tanks on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and convert it into a glass-like substance for permanent disposal, according to a decision that will be published Friday.

The decision covers the nation’s biggest collection of radioactive waste, held in 177 underground tanks at the sprawling reservation near Richland that has been engaged in environmental cleanup for the past two decades. The material is left over from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The document said the Energy Department intends to retrieve 99 percent of the stored waste and close up the tanks. Some of the tanks date back to World War II and have leaked.

It’s necessary to remove the radioactive material to avoid future leaks into groundwater and other safety concerns, the decision says……..

The watchdog group Hanford Challenge criticized the decision to leave some 1 percent of the highly radioactive waste in the tanks.

“That’s 500,000 gallons or more,” said executive director Tom Carpenter. “We expect all of the waste from the tanks to be removed.”

The Energy Department said it also intends to dismantle the aboveground portions of the Fast Flux Test Facility reactor and “entomb” the underground portions of the closed research reactor……

The state agency and the EPA have a legal agreement with the Energy Department that sets deadlines to clean up the Hanford site, which is half the size of Rhode Island……http://www.seattlepi.com/business/energy/article/Feds-adopt-plans-for-disposing-of-nuclear-waste-5059175.php

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Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

nuclear-news

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