Tank
at Hanford nuclear site leaking radioactive liquids, Washington
governor says
A
tank that holds radioactive liquids is leaking at the nation's most
contaminated nuclear site, Wash. Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday, raising
concerns about the integrity of other storage facilities at the
Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
15
February, 2013
The
U.S. Department of Energy said liquid levels are decreasing in one of
177 underground tanks at the nuclear reservation. Monitoring wells
near the tank have not detected higher radiation levels, the agency
said. Inslee said the leak could be in the range of 150 gallons to
300 gallons over the course of a year.
"I
am alarmed about this on many levels," Inslee said at a Friday
afternoon news conference. "This raises concerns, not only about
the existing leak ... but also concerning the integrity of the other
single shell tanks of this age."
The
tanks hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from
decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
Inslee
said the state was told such problems had been dealt with years ago
and were under control.
Energy
Secretary Steven Chu said the federal government must not waiver in
its commitment to clean up the highly contaminated site, Inslee told
reporters.
The
tank in question contains about 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture
of solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency. The tank, built in
the 1940s, is known to have leaked in the past, but was stabilized in
1995 when all liquids that could be pumped out of it were removed.
Inslee
said the tank is the first to have been documented to be losing
liquids since all Hanford tanks were stabilized in 2005.
At
the height of World War II, the federal government created Hanford in
the remote sagebrush of eastern Washington as part of a hush-hush
project to build the atomic bomb. The site ultimately produced
plutonium for the world's first atomic blast and for one of two
atomic bombs dropped on Japan, effectively ending the war.
Plutonium
production continued there through the Cold War, but today, Hanford
is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup will cost
billions of dollars and last decades.
Central
to that cleanup is the removal of millions of gallons of a highly
toxic, radioactive stew — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size
swimming pools — from 177 aging, underground tanks. Over time, many
of those tanks have leaked, threatening the groundwater and the
neighboring Columbia River, the largest waterway in the Pacific
Northwest.
Construction
of a $12.3 billion plant to convert the waste to a safe, stable form
is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
Technical problems have slowed the project, and several workers have
raised lawsuits in recent months, claiming they were retaliated
against for raising concerns about the plant's design and safety.
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