One can hope for some better news but it is not really expected.
From the
Yakima Herald:
Governor: Six underground Hanford nuclear tanks leaking
Six underground tanks that hold a brew of radioactive and toxic waste at the nation�s most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, federal and state officials said Friday.
Gov. Jay Inslee said the leaking material poses no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take a while � perhaps years � to reach groundwater.
But the leaking tanks raise new concerns about delays for emptying them and strike another blow to federal efforts to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation, where successes often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges.
It is not just groundwater we need to be worried about. The Hanford plant is situated on the banks of the Columbia River. The leaks are not big -- 150 to 300 gallons per tank per year -- a drop at a time...
More:
The federal government already spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup � one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The Energy Department has said it expects funding levels to remain the same for the foreseeable future, but a new Energy Department report released this week includes annual budgets of as much as $3.5 billion during some years of the cleanup effort.
Much of that money goes toward construction of a plant to convert the underground waste into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The plant, last estimated at more than $12.3 billion, is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule. It isn�t expected to being operating until at least 2019.
Given those delays, the federal government will have to show that there is adequate storage for the waste in the meantime, Inslee said.
The DOE needs to stop trying to do it and farm it out to some company with tried and true nuclear experience -- Bechtel, Westinghouse, Babcock and Wilcox. Another perfect example of government efficiency at its finest.
And for once, I totally agree with an environmentalist:
Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group, said Friday it�s disappointing that the Energy Department is not further along on the waste treatment plant and that there aren�t new tanks to transfer waste into.
�None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service,� he said. �And yet, they�re holding two-thirds of the nation�s high-level nuclear waste.�
Wyden noted the nation�s most contaminated nuclear site � and the challenges associated with ridding it of its toxic legacy � will be a subject of upcoming hearings and a higher priority in Washington, D.C.
It is not like these things suddenly sprung into existence -- we have known about this witches brew for over sixty years. We could have built aboveground tanks, pumped the materials into them and then passivated them.
Another option is to burn the waste with a breeder reactor but, although these things work wonderfully, they use Thorium and not Uranium and Thorium does not go Ka-Boom and the USA wanted stuff that went Ka-Boom as well as commercial power. We didn't want to spend the money for two separate trains of nuclear development so back in the 1960's and 1970's, we decided to go with the stuff that goes Ka-Boom and funding was cut for Breeders.
Breeder Reactors (Google
Breeder Reactor and
LFTR) can burn conventional nuclear waste and when all is said and done, the resulting waste materials only need to be sequestered for about 300 years.
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