Washington nuclear waste leak

FOX Seattle: Nuclear waste leaks at Hanford are far worse than we thought

Fox News,

22 February, 2013

WASHINGTON — Six single-shell radioactive waste tanks at the Hanford site are leaking, not just the one tank that was reported earlier, Gov. Jay Inslee announced Friday.

Inslee made the announcement after a meeting in Washington with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and three of Chu’s aides.

“We have some … disturbing news,” Inslee said in a conference call with Washington state reporters. “Secretary Chu advised me that we have six confirmed leaking single-shell tanks at the Hanford site – and not one that was reported earlier this week.”

Inslee said one or two of the leaking tanks are in different tank farm sites at Hanford than the earlier leaking tank. “The amount of leakage differs from tank to tank,” Inslee said.

The increased number of leaking tanks was only discovered at this time because previous data was “not properly evaluated” at the federally run Hanford site, the governor said Chu told him. Inslee said because of that, more tanks would be evaluated.

“This raises the prospect we have leakage in additional tanks beyond the six,” Inslee said. “There are six leakers; there may be more.”

Inslee said Chu assured him that “there is no imminent health threat connected to these leaks,” but agreed action has to be taken to prevent the radioactive waste from leaking into the state’s ground and groundwater.

The governor said he would be meeting with Energy Department in the coming weeks to discuss options on how to deal with the leaking tanks.

“We need a new action plan at Hanford,” Inslee said, adding that his administration has “zero-tolerance policy” toward the leak of nuclear waste.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson released a statement that said the U.S. Department of Energy has failed to “adequately resolve the significant threat posed by the nuclear waste at Hanford.” He added that he is “committed to protecting the health and safety of our people and our environment. Our office continues to explore all legal options with the governor and the Department of Ecology.”

There are a total of 177 storage tanks at the Hanford site, 149 of which are single-shell tanks

For video GO HERE

Radioactive Waste Is Leaking From Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation

Zero Hedge,

22 February, 2013

And now for a quick lesson in government spending: in the 1940s the federal government created the now mostly decommissioned Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. 

During the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Sadly, many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate, and government documents have since confirmed that Hanford's operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River.

The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons of high-level radioactive waste, an additional 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater beneath the site and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations that slow the pace and raise the cost of cleanup. The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The cleanup is expected to last decades. It turns out that as Krugman would say, the government was not spending nearly enough, and moments ago Governor Jay Inslee said that six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking.

From AP:

Inslee made the announcement after meeting with federal officials in Washington, D.C. Last week it was revealed that one of the 177 tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation was leaking liquids. Inslee called the latest news "disturbing."

 

The tanks, which already are long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.

 

The U.S. Department of Energy said earlier that liquid levels were decreasing in one of the tanks at the site. Monitoring wells near the tank have not detected higher radiation levels.

And some more lessons on government spending:

Central to cleanup is the construction of a plant to convert millions of gallons of waste into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The $12.3 billion plant is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule.

See: if only the plant was hundreds of billions, or better yet, trillions of dollars over budget, funded entirely by the Fed's monetization of debt issuance of course, all would be well. Sure enough:

Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber have championed building additional tanks to ensure safe storage of the waste until the plant is completed. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said earlier this week that he shares their concerns about the integrity of the tanks, but that he wants more scientific information to determine it's the correct way to spend scarce money.

What is this "scarce money" he is talking about? Does he not know that today total US debt just hit a ridiculous all time high $16,608,318,357,376.54, which is $20 billion more than yesterday, and at this point is an absolutely meaningless number? It's not like anyone holds any hope that the US will repay this debt ever.

Then again, if the Columbia river ends up spawning some cool-looking mutants, and if the Canadians start turning violent over concerns that the US is exporting them a little more radiation than they bargained for, then the resulting civil/Canadian war once the US can no longer funds its trillion+ deficits will be all the more colorful and vibrant.

So let radiation leak: in fact print more money to buy more Made in Fukushima plutonium and bury it under the complex. After all - as with every thought experiment, such as that of the US solvency when debt is now 104% of GDP, it must be taken to its absurd limit to be fully appreciated by all those who fought tooth and nail against our original proposal from a year ago to build a death star. Because the only thing better than a nearly $1 quintillion death star is two nearly $1 quintillion death stars.