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- Paper: U.S. nuclear site “a true horror story” — Officials should be screaming at top of their lungs in outrage — “Problems could lead to explosions or nuclear reactions” #Hanford
- Photo: “Fire broke out at nuclear reactor” — “Plumes of black smoke could be seen from a considerable distance”
- California’s San Onofre nuclear plant permanently shut down (VIDEO)
Paper: U.S. nuclear
site “a true horror story” — Officials should be screaming at top of their
lungs in outrage — “Problems could lead to explosions or nuclear reactions”
#Hanford
Posted: 07 Jun 2013 03:55 PM PDT
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Photo: “Fire broke
out at nuclear reactor” — “Plumes of black smoke could be seen from a
considerable distance”
Posted: 07 Jun 2013 02:17 PM PDT
|
|
Posted: 07 Jun 2013 11:10 AM PDT
Video of Hanford nuke storage plant from "a true horror story" =
Hanford officials hid leak evidence from advisory panel
Posted on May 21, 2013 at 10:10 PM
Updated Friday, May 24 at 8:58 PM
A government-chartered advisory panel was told last September that materials spotted outside the inner wall of a tank holding radioactive waste at the Hanford Site were possibly the result of a "carbonate buildup," “cross-contamination” or "rainwater leakage."
"We've seen a lot of things and they don't point to any one thing," a senior U.S. Department of Energy official at Hanford told the group on Sept. 7, "so that's why it's hard to speculate what it is." But internal emails obtained by KING 5, written by the government contractor carrying the multi-billion-dollar contract to manage the tanks, show that tests conducted weeks earlier had already confirmed that the materials found in the safety space of the double-shell tank were highly radioactive and matched the chemical makeup of waste contained in the primary tank. On Aug. 13, results of a scientific analysis showed samples taken from the space contained high levels of two radioactive isotopes -- Strontium-90 and Cesium-137. Smaller traces of Plutonium-239/240 and Americium-241 were also detected. In addition scientists analyzing the sample found traces of potassium -- a unique marker to this specific tank (found in one other double-shell tank at Hanford). It would be another two-and-a-half months after the August 13 lab results before the Department of Energy and the private company that manages Hanford's tank farms officially announced that the underground tank known as 241-AY-102 was indeed leaking the most toxic material on the planet – the first double-shell tank to leak at Hanford. The delay in disclosing the August test results is not easily explained, given that the results came after numerous red flags had been documented over the previous ten months that strongly suggested a leak had occurred in the tank. Instead of thoroughly investigating those red flags, the first of which were detected in October 2011, the contractor --Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) -- continued to insist that that rainwater, not nuclear waste, had made its way into the space between the two tank walls. The leak of a double-shell tank is seen by nuclear policy experts as one of the most significant setbacks at Hanford in the last decade. There are 28 such tanks at the 586-square-mile government reservation in southeastern Washington, holding millions of gallons of radioactive waste generated by decades of plutonium production. These tanks were expected to hold the waste securely for another 40 to 50 years while technology is developed and the process to dispose of the waste permanently is implemented. Dozens of the older, single-shell tanks havealready leaked and cannot be relied upon to keep the environment and people safe from the hazardous materials. Overall, how the evidence of the leak in Tank 241-AY-102 was mishandled for a year raises questions about how the Department of Energy and private contractors are managing the multi-billion-dollar cleanup at Hanford and fulfilling their obligation to keep policymakers and the public informed about potential threats to the environment and human health. Evidence on duct tape The unknown materials referenced in the Sept. 7 briefing were spotted during a photographic inspection conducted by WRPS technicians in the first week of August. The materials were spotted in Tank 241-AY-102's annulus -- the 2-foot-wide space separating the inner and outer walls of the tank. To obtain physical samples, WRPS workers attached a piece of duct tape to a probe and lowered it to the annulus floor. When it was retrieved, the tape was covered with specks of rust and other solid materials. The tape was sent to the 222-S Laboratory at Hanford, also managed by WRPS, for testing. A Saturday, Aug. 11 email from the WRPS radiochemistry manager acknowledged receipt and promised results by Monday morning. |
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