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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWorst Hanford tank may be leaking into soil
Not good. Not good at all. Our state is screwed if they don't contain this: 
The first ever double-shell tank to have leaked at Hanford may be in far worse condition than anyone imagined. Hanford workers conducting routine maintenance on the tank, known as AY-102, Thursday were shocked to find readings of radioactivity from material outside the tank. Until now leaked nuclear sludge had only been detected in what's known as the tank's annulus -- the hollow safety space between the tank's two walls.
The tank has been at the center of a KING 5 investigation for months. The underground carbon steel vessel holds 865,000 gallons of the most chemically contaminated, thermally hot, corrosive and radioactive material at the site.
The U.S. Department of Energy, in a unique move, issued an email late Thursday night about the turn of events.
"On Thursday, June 20, 2013, workers detected an increased level of contamination during a routine removal of water and survey of (AY-102's) leak detection pit...The source of contamination is not yet verified, but may be an indication of a leak from the AY-102 tank’s secondary containment," wrote Lori Gamache, spokesperson for the DOE's Office of River Protection (ORP) in Richland.
The leak detection pit is located underneath the massive tank and has contact with the soil.
http://www.king5.com/news/local/Worst-Hanford-tank-may-be-leaking-into-soil-212259211.html
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htuttle
(23,738 posts)And to their great, great, great grandchildren.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)Company Town
Along this stretch of river,
silence never lifts.
Boarded up houses with “for sale” signs
line the edge of town,
out past the Atomic Autowrecker’s
tangle of rust, chrome, broken windshields,
and blackberry vines.
Downwind, nothing moves.
Not many secrets remain buried either;
the rotten past bubbles up
through floorboards,
sloughs off walls,
oozes into the river.
They say scientists once spun starglass here,
nothing left now but the ticking of geiger counters
and the certainty that someone will be taking a reading on you soon
Seems everyone in town knows
the old guy who worked at the plant forty
years, never had an accident,
smoked five packs of marlboros
every day, ate lard on toast, pissed
out gutloads of beer,
drove ten miles in his pickup to the plant
along this road every damned day,
window rolled down, dust blowing
in off the arid reach.
He was the oldest man in town
when he died. Outlived a whole lot of people.
Didn't hurt him any.
Even outlived his kid--the one with the
thyroid. No one knew what was wrong.
A long time ago before they had names
for that kind of stuff. Could
have been in the milk, they said.
Afterwards, his wife got all wore down,
bone tired long before no doubt;
she caught a bus heading west. Never came back.
His neighbor ran off too.
That’s when the first ones went on medical disability.
One of the plant managers
blamed carelessness. Company doctor wouldn’t
say, but everyone else knew it was cancer.
They died in pieces, one inch at a time, in those days.
How many?
No one dares keep score in a company town
where the high school jocks wear
atomic mushroom clouds on
their letterman’s jackets, and everyone
knows someone they like who works over there.
the women work elsewhere if they are
still young enough to want more babies.
In a company town like this, everyone
is strictly non-essential personnel,
sniffed and x-rayed everyday before
they get off work. They carry the weight
of spent fuel rods
like deadly suppositories. You can hear their terrified footsteps
echo as they pass through scanners, past
machine gun armed security, you can hear their shoes click
against cement as they punch a timeclock
ticking to meltdown.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)I was born and raised in Washington, lived on both sides of the Cascades.
I remember reading in the late 70's/early 80's about radiation leaking into the Columbia river.
Stopped eating salmon about then.
It made sense even then that with no place to safely store "forever" radiation, deadly consequences were inevitable sooner than later.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)I lived in Moses Lake for four years as a kid.
Stay healthy. 
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)prolly for less than a year I think.
And Ellensberg.
all together, spent maybe 5 years, till age 10, in E. Wash.
elleng
(131,018 posts)and showing it, for many years.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)I guess the stuff is so deadly they are afraid of pumping it out into another tank?
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)Your state is being screwed in large part by the left wing of the environmentalists blocking every attempt to establish a permanent repository for high level radioactive waste. And, thank you, Nevada.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)I ask you to explain where it is they can store this waste?
As far as I can tell they can't even move it.
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)They can move it, but it's a moot point.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Then why don't they transfer it to another tank?
Last I heard, they stir it up, they think it will blow up.
Seems you are not to wise about this?
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)You are overly aggressive in your ignorance, assuming that your bluster will somehow win the day.
All you had to do was click the link and read the article:
But, you chose the other approach.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)That is 6 years away.
They have already spent billions to design a pump and handling system. Now they need a few more billion and 7 more years?
Hey, I can't blame them for being careful. That is old bomb making material.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Where it was in perfect conditions to suffer a criticality event.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)You really think it's environmentalists' fault that those tanks are in the shape they are in? And you say left wing environmentalists like they are lepers. You are exposing your own gps location there. What the hell?
Blame leftwing environmentalists! What the hell. You should be hounded from DU for saying shit like that.
bahrbearian
(13,466 posts)wouldn't be in this mess.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)"You should be hounded from DU for saying shit like that."
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)Yes, you are part of the problem. Anyone who reacts as you just did is an impediment, not part of the solution.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)I am not part of the problem.
You slur those who insist on a solution to a problem they did not create. Yeah, I understand environmentalists in other states not wanting to have Hanford's crap unloaded on them. Have you ever been to Hanford? I have. I was given a tour with other selected individuals in the hope I would return home ready to defend the industry's practices.
Yeah you are exposed to more radiation eating on orange fiesta ware they'll tell you. Or flying in a plane. Oh sure they told us that while we were ticking away on the geiger counters, bald. pale pre-cancerous workers. I know a woman who worked there two years and decided she could never have a child. Several others who got brain cancer and are now 100% disabled.
Yeah it's safe they told me. What about the fact that women of chldbearing age are told can't work there? What of the high incidence of brain tumors among nuke workers? They avoided my questions. One looked at me with desperation in his eyes when asked how he could take such risks with his life. He said "It's a living."
Well no, it's a dying.
How dare you blame this catastrophe on "leftwing" environmentalists. Just who the hell do you think posts on DU? Luckily who you denigrate the rest of us will esteem.
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)You and I are NOT communicating at all. I am definitely slurring those who block solutions to the problem, not those who are busy trying to fix environmental catastrophes. I slur those bastards who let citizens of Washington be exposed to high level radioactivity rather than allow the construction and use of a repository. I slur the ignorant jackasses who block train routes for the transport to safe locations.
Are you part of that crowd?
Holy shit. How many times do I need to tell you that I am not blaming environmentalists for Hanford? Read my words, will you please?
Yes, I've been to Hanford. Working for PNNL living in Richland. I worked for years on the disposal of that shit that somebody else created, and I get infuriated every time some left wing environmentalist who doesn't know one damned thing about it gets in the way of solving the problem. If that's you, then, yes -- I am slurring you with a vengeance.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)When I went to Hanford, we screened ATOMIC CAFE. Like ten years after it was released. In a high school biology teacher's classroom. And he got threats! To try and prevent us from watching a video and having a discussion.
Tri-Cities is a scary place. So is Moses Lake where I lived as a child. I am a "downwinder" from the bad years. My father died of it. A leukemia so rare...well you know the story.
And the environmentalists have good reason not to want to become a repository as Hanford has. Imagine if they had stored all that crap in the salt mines of Louisiana where that sinkhole developed due to fracking. Our clean-up policies are lame. I am a teacher. I get slammed on a daily basis for what a shitty job I am doing educating students. Your industry has the worst record of any as far as I can see. And yes, you may have been trying to dispose of stuff others left behind, but you kept adding to the crap. With no plan! That is the true lunacy of the nuke industry. One of the operators at Hanford told me the first emergency plans included an ax for cutting a rope that held the core reactors so they would fall into the vat in case of emergency. Now I know he was kidding, but still!
And the place is an armed fortress. The only time in my life I ever saw real Star Wars storm troopers guarding the elevators to the core. That heavily armed guard reminded me of this stanza from Byron's poem "The Death of Sennicherib" when the angel of death killed the mighty Assyrian Army as they slept on the eve of battle:
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
Stormtroopers can't protect me from what I saw at Hanford unfortunately.
edit: typos. GRRR
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)Read this carefully before you begin to formulate a response.
1. Hanford is the worst environmental disaster on the planet. There is not enough money in all the economies of the world to fix it. That is a fact.
2. Hanford (unlike someone else was claiming) is the result exclusively of production of the plutonium version of the atomic bomb during WWII. There are dozen or so retired reactors there, not just one.
3. Solid and liquid waste exists at Hanford in poorly designed, "temporary" facilities that were never intended to hold this poison for 70 years. It's all leaking.
4. The area is protected for a thousand reasons, but Star Wars guards are not the most scary parts. Lurking pockets of radioactive crap are everywhere. Every lab, every building, every road is a potential hazard.
5. It isn't safe. Whoever told you that lied. However, you cannot contract cancer from it simply by walking past or living 100 miles away.
6. No one lives at the Hanford site. Workers are bused in (I'm assuming that's still true). The trip is about 20 miles.
7. The Columbia is monitored all the time. The data is available telling you exactly how much radiation there is at various points along the way.
You probably knew most of that stuff, so, new stuff:
8. "the environmentalists have good reason not to want to become a repository as Hanford has." No! If you worry about being a downwinder, do you want the next generation to grow up under the same cloud of uncertainty? Let the science do its work and get out of the way. Get all that moved and entombed someplace safe.
9. "Imagine if they had stored all that crap in the salt mines of Louisiana." Why? It was never a serious consideration. Salt mines dropped out early with the salt dome in Texas being the last to drop out.
10. " Our clean-up policies are lame." No. The policies are fine, but people keep getting in the way.
11. "Your industry has the worst record of any as far as I can see." My industry? I'm an environmental chemist, not a nuclear engineer. We have a fantastic record of accomplishment, thank you.
12. "And yes, you may have been trying to dispose of stuff others left behind, but you kept adding to the crap." Again, not me. The nuclear industry exists. If it disappeared tomorrow -- or 20 years ago -- we still would have no place to put the waste.
13. "With no plan! That is the true lunacy of the nuke industry." Two words: Yucca Mountain.
If you really want to be educated on this, that's fine. But, right now, you are carry a lot of bad information.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)Actually they have housing developments no further than five miles these days. With alarms in the basement. Couldn't let that prime riverfront property go to waste now, could we?
I am aware that Yucca was the major site chosen, and it did sound viable to me. BUT, the people of that state objected. That doesn't make them some irresponsible dirty hippie treehuggers.
Anyway, I assumed you worked in the industry as you seemed to indicate earlier. I have issues with any industry that has no clean-up plan yet continues to spew toxic waste. That is probably a wide enough net to include yours.
indie9197
(509 posts)It is a spooky, desolate place. Can places have bad karma? I worked on waste retrieval projects there for two years recently. You may work just outside the Hanford gates but you are spreading some misinformation of your own.
1. Mayak (Russia's version of Hanford) is worse. Way worse.
2. The PUREX facility at Hanford was processing plutonium up until 1988.
4. The security level has dropped considerably the last 2-3 years as weapons grade plutonium has all been shipped off. I didnt see any Storm Troopers when I worked there.
5. Safety is a relative term. I didnt feel unsafe working there and most of the site has normal radiation and contamination levels. The chemical hazards are scarier to me. Workers occasionally get burned by airborne nitic acid at the tanks. I dont think I would work at the Tank Farms.
9. Salt domes are currently used in New Mexico and other places in the world for high level waste. The WIPP facility in NM could possibly have taken waste from Hanford but it is specifically written in their license that they will not do so.
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)I've been away from all this for awhile and, apparently, have missed a number of developments.
The WIPP site completely slipped my mind because it was off our radar when I was at Hanford.
When I was at Hanford, two workers received sizable, internal doses of alpha emitters. One was a worker removing an old fume hood. He was not wearing a breathing apparatus (or it was ill-fitting), and he inhaled a significant quantity of plutonium oxide powder that was trapped in the seams of the hood. The other was a technician and friend of mine. He received a direct injection into his blood stream when he accidentally crushed a vial in his hands. The broken vial pierced the two layers of gloves he was wearing, and the dose he received but the detectors off. He immediately received an experimental treatment of chelating agents that apparently saved his life -- he's still alive today and should not be (some decades later).
I will grant you that enormous vats of nitric acid are terrifying, too.
Again, thanks for putting my information back on track.
Oh, and by the way, is WIPP is the only functioning salt dome repository? Two others have closed.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)I dedicate it to you. From a "leftwing" environmentalist. To a slightly more rightwing voice.
I hope you stay healthy and never experience any ill-effects from your employment, And if you are still in the industry, I wish you well solving the very real problems that exist.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023065024#post32
suffragette
(12,232 posts)http://www.king5.com/news/local/Worst-Hanford-tank-may-be-leaking-into-soil-212259211.html
AY-102 is one of 28 double shell underground nuclear storage tanks at Hanford. These are newer, sturdier tanks than the older single shell tanks at the site, six of which are known to currently be leaking nuclear waste into the environment. The double-shell tanks were hoped to be a saving grace for Hanford -- a way to safely contain 56-million gallons of waste from decades of plutonium production until the treatment plant .
The treatment plant noted above has had major issues,too. Posted about that before:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1293867
This is the true cost of nuclear power and waste and it's not measured by wattage.
Thanks for keeping on top of this.
NutmegYankee
(16,200 posts)suffragette
(12,232 posts)Though it avoids using the term 'nuclear' in its name.
http://www.afd-pdx.org/columbia-generating-station.html
The Columbia Generating Station (CGS), previously known as WPPSS #2, is the Pacific Northwest’s only remaining nuclear power plant. Its GE Mark II design is very similar to the three reactors that melted down in Fukushima, Japan in March 2011. The CGS nuclear plant has the same flaws in its design that allowed radiation to escape containment in Fukushima. These flaws include a containment vessel that is too small. a waste storage fuel pool that is built five stories above ground, and a faulty design allowing hydrogen to build up inside posing a threat of explosion. It also produces 50,000 pounds of highly radioactive waste each year with no off site treatment or storage solution in sight.
Also, this is in an earthquake zone with dams upstream, raising the possibility of a "man-made tsunami:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x653404
indie9197
(509 posts)But the operating nuclear power plant has nothing to do with the leaking tanks or anything else at Hanford except that it is located within the Hanford site.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)That they also processed nuke power plant waste. Surely at least some of it came from the nearby plant.
There is no reason in the world to give power plant waste a bye, it's all deadly and like we saw at Fukushima can explode like a bomb.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)with the other toxic waste. They continue to produce it. The best way to contain it is a future "plan" to turn it all into glass. I was given a glass marble made of nuke waste as a souvenir. I guess turning millions of gallons of waste into glass turns out to be as hard as turning straw into gold because it still hasn't happened. Something about needing to develop the technology. Rumpelstiltskin!
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Who knew the left enviros were so powerful?
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)I mean that has been the problem all along, hasn't it?
suffragette
(12,232 posts)Which is a nuclear plant there.
I think the name of it (not including the word nuclear) is one reason we don't hear more about it.
And there have been issues already with the vitrification treatment plant which have come to light thanks to whistleblowers.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)That's how they separated the plutonium from uranium?
And the residue is what is stored in some tanks.
Did you know we have a self proclaimed nuke expert on board? Yep.
Here's a link to their latest:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=47619
suffragette
(12,232 posts)http://www.hanfordwatch.org/introduction.htm
From 1943 to 1988 Hanford produced plutonium for nuclear weapons, using a line of nuclear reactors along the river. Cooling water from the river was piped through the reactors, then fed back into the river. Spent fuel rods from the reactors were dissolved in nitric acid to separate out the plutonium. Enormous amounts of highly radioactive and chemical waste were generated in the process. Since the production of plutonium ceased, Hanford’s only mission has been cleanup.
The vitrification plant is the new plan to turn the waste into glass. It's in the process of being built and already has had major safety issues. Here's an article describing some of them. Note that the issues being raised are by the scientists and engineers who work there, so these are pro-nuclear people saying there are safety issues.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2015923293_apwahanfordvitplant1stldwritethru.html
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Mankind doesn't need to be this colossally stupid, but we seem to be proud of the trait as if it's a sign of strength. Bush voters saw the fact he didn't ask for other opinions, answer questions or negotiate, meant GWB came from a position of strength.
To them, 'Ignorance Is Strength' because they see anyone who is willing to learn from the opinions of others is a weakling and without a spine or strength of convicionts. Exactly the way they see Democrats. That is an old meme from the right that is now in vogue with the left.
Sigh...
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)This is the fear. The plant is on the banks.
bahrbearian
(13,466 posts)Radioactive oysters in Willapa Bay, WA
updated Mar 23, 2011 by Daniel
During the 1950's and 1960's, radioactivity from Hanford was found at high concentrations in shellfish in Willapa Bay at the mouth of the Columbia which extended for at least 200 miles into the Pacific Ocean. Beginning in 1959, zinc-59 levels in the oysters at Willapa Bay were being monitored. At that time, levels of zinc-65, a radioactive byproduct of plutonium production, in Pacific coast oysters were 300 times greater oysters from Japanese and Atlantic waters. In the 1960's a Hanford employee set off radiation alarms when he entered the Hanford Site. Upon investigation it was determined that he had become radioactive from eating a can of oyster stew that contained oysters harvested from Willapa Bay.
They contend that the Radiation flowed down the Columbia to Willapa bay
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)My family vacations near Ilwaco. Of course any radiation found at Long Beach area would have come down the Columbia. I guess it is already too late. 
freshwest
(53,661 posts)The genie is out of the bottle, but mankind is satisfied with the next shiny.
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)They count so few going upstream it is ridiculous to continue to pretend we even have wild salmon stocks in our rivers.
