RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION FOUND ON CLOTHES OF HANFORD WORKER

[Judi Lynn]

May 19, 8:22 PM EDT


RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- A worker at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state got radioactive contamination on his clothing this week during an incident at an underground waste storage tank that indicated a possible leak.

Contractor Washington River Protection Solutions said the worker was removing a robotic device out of the space between the double walls of Tank AZ-101 on Thursday evening. Monitors detected radiation at three times the expected level, and the workers left the area, said the company, which operates the storage tanks for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Radioactive contamination was found on one worker's protective clothing, which was removed, the company said. Monitors showed no further contamination on that worker, and all members of the crew were cleared to return to normal duty, the contractor said.

Hanford is near Richland, Washington, and for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons. Millions of gallons of the most dangerous wastes produced by that work are stored in 177 underground tanks, many of which are decades old and have leaked.

More:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WA_HANFORD_RADIATION_OROL-?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[Snackshack]

1. Scary.

I have been watching a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster. Anyone who thinks Nuclear energy is the answer to CO2 emissions should watch it. Nuclear is just too dangerous..."To err is human" as we have all heard...and when that "err" takes thousands of years to correct it should not be on the table for consideration.

The really scary part about watching the documentary is that Chernobyl was one reactor and they know where the core/fuel rods are.. Fukushima lost 3 reactors and the cores are still not accounted for...

From a report in March 2016.

"The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now."

[NNadir]

2. That's nothing. Dangerous fossil fuel waste has been found in the lungs of every living mammal...

Last edited Fri May 19, 2017, 11:23 PM - Edit history (1)

...on the planet, not that anyone gives a rat's ass about it.

In fact, the same people who don't give a rat's ass about the fact that every living thing on earth is continuously exposed to highly toxic fossil fuel waste, burn gas, coal and petroleum to tell us all about the laundry at Hanford.

Which happens more often, people and other animals breathe benzofurans and benzodioxins, or a worker at Hanford has radioactive clothes that he or she needs to change?

I'll bet Dr. Erin Baker is about to abandon her research, and run out of town screaming.

Nah. Probably not.

I had the privilege of hearing her speak about, um, science recently, up in Boston.

She mentioned plutonium by way of introduction of her laboratory's raison d'etre somehow I'm sure she's not going nuts about this, even if people who know nothing at all about radiation - clearly not her - are losing their marbles, and, again, burning coal and gas to run computers to tell us about the laundry at Richland.

She's working on the "exposome:"

Metz TO, EM Baker, EL Schymanski, RS Renslow, DG Thomas, TJ Causon, IK Webb, S Hann, RD Smith, and JG Teeguarden. 2017. "Integrating Ion Mobility Spectrometry into Mass Spectrometry-based Exposome Measurements: What Can It Add and How Far Can It Go?" Bioanalysis 9(1):81-98. doi:10.4155/bio-2016-0244

Whatcha think that is?

A laundry list?

The reason this planet is rapidly going to shit is not because of the laundry at Hanford. It's because people can't differentiate between what is serious and what is not.

Seven million people will die this year from air pollution, a large fraction of them under the age of 5, and we're discussing the laundry at Hanford.