America’s largest radioactive clean-up operation – at Hanford

America’s largest radioactive clean-up operation – at Hanford – has stalled

Nation’s most ambitious project to clean up nuclear weapons waste has stalled at Hanford, LA Times, By RALPH VARTABEDIANJUN 04, 2019

The Energy Department’s most environmentally important and technically ambitious project to clean up Cold War nuclear weapons waste has stalled, putting at jeopardy an already long-delayed effort to protect the Columbia River in central Washington.

In a terse letter last week, state officials said the environmental project is at risk of violating key federal court orders that established deadlines after past ones were repeatedly missed.

Two multibillion-dollar industrial facilities intended to turn highly radioactive sludge into solid glass at the Hanford nuclear site have been essentially mothballed. Construction was halted in 2012 because of design flaws and Energy Department managers have foundered in finding alternatives, according to the letter that threatens new litigation. The department has stored 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge left over from the production of plutonium in 177 leaky underground tanks on a desert plateau a few miles from the Columbia River, raising concerns that the material has migrated into groundwater and eventually will reach the largest river in the West. The original idea was to chemically treat the sludge, mix it with sand and then melt the combination in furnaces to create glass that would be stable for centuries, but the plan was harder than expected because the sludge is so chemically and radioactively toxic. The process required the construction of a massive industrial complex.

The issue of tank waste is just one of the difficult problems at the Hanford site. Last year, the Energy Department halted demolition of its shuttered plutonium finishing plant after plutonium dust repeatedly set off evacuation alarms at the work site, drifted miles away to a public road and coated workers’ cars. In 2017, an old tunnel at the site that stored radioactive debris collapsed.

Maia Bellon, Washington’s Department of Ecology director, said in the letter that federal officials have taken repeated unilateral actions that will make their cleanup unlikely to meet critical deadlines set up in a 2016 consent decree in federal court, which came after the department violated a 2010 legal agreement.

The department has committed to removing and disposing all of the underground tank waste by 2047, though Bellon said the state doesn’t think that is possible at current funding levels. The six-page letter was addressed to Anne White, chief of environmental management at the Energy Department. The Times obtained the letter from Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group that has closely monitored the contaminated facility.

“This is clearly setting the table for litigation,” said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the group. “The Energy Department is going to miss all of these deadlines.” Carpenter noted that in February, the Energy Department issued a new cost estimate to remediate the entire Hanford site, taking it from $110 billion to as much as $660 billion, a cost increase that has staggered Congress and has fueled sentiment to cut short the cleanup goals. “They are walking away from important elements of the cleanup,” he said.

A spokeswoman at the Energy Department’s site office in nearby Richland said they had not seen the letter. A spokesman for White did not return calls seeking comment. White announced her resignation last week…… https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-nuclear-cleanup-20190604-story.html

June 6, 2019 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes

1 Comment »

People decry The Tokyo 2002 Olympic Games Events by Fukushima, after the 311 nuclear catastrophe. It is of little difference from what nuclear countries, have done for years, to hide their nuclear messes.
The American Nuclear-Propaganda Machine is aces, at coverups and putting lipstick on a pig. America, Britain, France, and Russia goverhnment Propaganda machines, are where Abe, Lady Judge, Shellenberger, Trump Thomas Hypermetropia take their cues, for their lies and propaganda about nuclear dangers .

Hanford Plutonium Reservation is one of the most radioactive places on earth. Full of plutonium, Hilevel waste, discarded nuclear submarines. There is even a vintage fukushima-style nuclear reactor close to there, in the bleak TriCities desert. A veritable cornucopia of Nuclear Criminality and crimes against humanity. Especially the Citizens of Washington state.
The huge Hanford reservation sits on the edge of one of the largest and, most beautiful rivers in the world. The Columbia River.

There are warnings to river rafters, on the Beautiful Columbia River, that they are entering the Hanford Plutonium Reservation and will be close to Hanford, for the next 10 mile. No warnings about the radiation or radionuclides, pouring into the the river, from The Huge Hanford Plutonium
Reservation.

People in Washington State and Oregon, have been Fed-up with this 300 square mile radiation generating atrocity, for years. The federal governments answer to that, is to turn it into a National Park, dedicated to the theme of the production of the first atomic bombs that killed, maimed, and mutated millions in Japan. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were later shown to be unecessary sadistic-genocides, of the worst kind.
https://www.nps.gov/mapr/hanford.htm
Manhatten Atomic Bomb National Park
Hanford Washington.

There are many places american and international tourists, visit in america that are radioactive . Places that have the potential to be as radioactive as Fukushima.
Big Bend National Park in Texas is close to 20000 tons of Outdoor-High Level Nuclear waste. There are 50 thousand tons buried at Marfa, down the road, WIPP in New Mexico had a plutonium fire a few years ago. WIPP, Alamagordo and whitesands in new mexico, are where they detonated a bomb and did nuclear experiments.

They have been parading dangerous nuclear Tourism at Pripyat for years, in the Ukraine.

Millions of tourists visit The Grand Canyon yearly. They are not told of the history.

Many visit the Tennesse Valley Authority Complexes in the SE US, where there are several old reactors and uranium processing facilities.

How about goin swimming at the beach of LaHague France, where raw plutonium drools out of the Plutonium Reprocessing plant, into the sea?

There are 10s of millions of tourists In Southern Utah and Nevada, and Colorado. Places where Nuclear Bombs were exploded . Places where there are Uranium piles. Tourists visit these places yearly . They are not notified of the dangers.

Driving through Fallon Nevada, where nuclear waste was fracked into the ground in the sixties, you would not know of the bad water or cancer clusters there.

Lucky Las Vegas, Nevada, where many bombs have been detonated. Close to where there have been purposeful nuclear reactor meltdowns at jackass flats, to see what the radiation would do to people downwind…

People are not notified of risks, when they visit close to any of the Nuclear Reactors in America, Europe, Korea, France or anywhere else.

Take a country drive though Paducah Kentucky by the uranium purification plant, anyone?

How about a cross country visit to the Hundred Nuclear of waste sites in France. You are not likely to know where they are.

Let’s go swimming by San Onofre in the Pacific, By San Diego.

The Rocky Flats Plutonium Prduction facility outside of Denver, is being turned into a Historical Park and wildlife area.
Millions of tourists visit these places yearly and, are not notified of the dangers of plutonium still present.

Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge opens this weekend, completing 17-year shift from nuclear triggers to hiking and biking

The Los Alamos Bradbury Atomic Heritage Museum, on top of the Los Alamos mountain, is where americas nuclear weapons are made. It is where there are measurable amounts of americium in hotspings, in the surrounding areas . It is where background radiation is double of what it is in other areas, in america and other countries.

The life expectancy of dogs around los alamos is 5 to 8 years.

How about a nice mountain bike ride, along smoldering West Lake Land-Fill, by St Louis?

There are the many places in America, where there are major nuclear waste dumps and background radiation, is higher than most places like australia, because those places are chocked-full of radionuclide poison.
jamesherringresearch.wordpress.com/history-and-background-of-nuclear-waste

Let’s go see Mayak in Russia.

How about By Sellefield in Britain . Would’nt that be a lovely radioactive-Tourism, adventure?

Comment by doug | June 7, 2019 | Reply

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