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kristopher

(29,798 posts)
Tue Mar 11, 2014, 06:16 AM Mar 2014

Leak in massive Hanford nuclear waste tank getting worse

Leak in massive Hanford nuclear waste tank getting worse
via King5.com

RICHLAND, Wash. — Workers have found more waste leaking between the walls of a nuclear storage tank on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

The waste was found in a new place between the walls of one of the 28 double shell tanks at the site. The US Dept. of Energy, which owns Hanford, says the waste is covering an area of 7 feet by 21 inches. The double shell tanks were built to be the most robust tanks at Hanford. They were constructed with the intent to be able to safely store the dangerous wastes until the technology to permanently dispose of the liquids is developed. A leak in a double shell tank is seen as one of the biggest setbacks to the cleanup program at Hanford in the last decade.

[...]
It’s been nearly two-and-a-half years since recently retired WRPS worker, Mike Geffre, found the first signs of the leak in October, 2011. To date, there is no solid plan on how to mitigate the leak or pump the contents of the tank to a safer holding vessel. Geffre says the company is stalling.

“Instead of being pro-active they become defensive. You need to handle everything as if it’s real. You may respond to a few false alarms but that’s the way it is. You cannot handle things, in the wait and see (mode). In the radiation world and the nuclear world that is extremely irresponsible,” said Geffre.

[...]
The Washington State Dept. of Ecology, which is a regulator at Hanford, has given the US Dept. of Energy until Friday, March 7, to submit a revised pumping plan for AY-102...


http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/atomicage/2014/03/08/leak-in-massive-hanford-nuclear-waste-tank-getting-worse-via-king5-com/


See also

'Bizarre' Cluster of Severe Birth Defects Haunts Health Experts
BY JONEL ALECCIA

A mysterious cluster of severe birth defects in rural Washington state is confounding health experts, who say they can find no cause, even as reports of new cases continue to climb.

Federal and state officials won’t say how many women in a three-county area near Yakima, Wash., have had babies with anencephaly, a heart-breaking condition in which they’re born missing parts of the brain or skull. And they admit they haven't interviewed any of the women in question, or told the mothers there's a potentially widespread problem.

But as of January 2013, officials with the Washington state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted nearly two dozen cases in three years, a rate four times the national average.

Since then, one local genetic counselor, Susie Ball of the Central Washington Genetics Program at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, says she has reported “eight or nine” additional cases of anencephaly and spina bifida, another birth defect in which the neural tube, which forms the brain and spine, fails to close properly.

“It does strike me as a lot,” says Ball.

And at least one Yakima...

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/bizarre-cluster-severe-birth-defects-haunts-health-experts-n24986
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Leak in massive Hanford nuclear waste tank getting worse (Original Post) kristopher Mar 2014 OP
"Many a little makes a mickle." ~ Poor Richard's Almanac . . . Journeyman Mar 2014 #1
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