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Date:         Sun, 26 Jul 1992 16:55:00 PDT
Reply-To:     Marianne Dugan <MDUGAN@OREGON.BITNET>
From:         Marianne Dugan <MDUGAN@OREGON.BITNET>
Subject:      nukes

It interested me to see that, right after we had some discussion
on nukes (can we trust them?  Do they tell us the truth?), on
July 22 the Trojan plant (40 miles northwest of Portland on the
mighty Columbia River) shut down after a feedwater pump failed;
after it shut down one of two systems designed to cool the
reactor during a shutdown also failed after two minutes of trying
to run.  The point of passing this bit of news on is -- well, two
points -- 1) It was buried on page D6 of the Oregonian -- the middle
of the 4th section of the paper, taking up only about 1/12 of a
page (compare to the
story on D2, almost 1/2 a page, about "meth lab discovered in
Salem Raid, with large photo!) ; and 2) The PGE news release
about the pump shutdown "did not mention the backup system's
failure.  When a reporter asked directly Wednesday about the
failure [luckily we had a reporter on the ball!], PGE spokesman
Dave Heintzman said he was unaware of such an incident.  But
after double-checking, he confirmed it."  Whether the
spokesperson was lying or uninformed, it's just another example
of why I choose not to swallow what I'm told by the industry!  (
Of course, the failure "did not endanger public safety" -- They
must have a macro on their word processors at nuke plants for
that phrase and/or the equivalent "no threat to the public"!)

Similar protocol has been practiced by Hanford Nuclear
Reservation; an Oregon article on July 19 (there must be Commies
running that paper, eh?) reminds us that the government
classified environmental info as "top secret," including the fact
that their waste tanks could explode (as similar tanks did in
Russia in the 1950s), a secret they kept for 13 years until
1990.  It is now confirmed that Hanford dumped more than 30
million curies of radiactivity directly into the Columbia from
1955 to 1959 (compare 50 million curies emitted by Chernobyl and
25 million from TMI).  Even though the direct dumping ended, to
this day Hanford stored liquid waste in open storage ponds,
gravel-lined trenches and wood-sided cribs with dirt bottoms; and
high-level waste was poured into single-shell underground tanks,
of which 66 tanks are known to leak.  It is also confirmed that
this stored waste is now reaching the Columbia and has
contaminated 200 square miles.  Tritium contamination at the
hottest spot doubled from 1985 to 1990 (now 8 times the federal
drinking water standards).  Beta radiation is 275 times the
drinking water standard where streams enter the Columbia;
radioactive strontium is at 900 times the standard.  Uranium
reaching the river is at 7 times the drinking water standard.
The studies commissioned by Hanford
itself show the water entering the Columbia is not safe to drink.

Yet the gov't  continues to dump waste water into trenches near
the Columbia -- 210 million gallons a year!  And though they've
admitted the need for cleanup, they still haven't figured out how
it can be done.  Their consulting company (Battelle) says "If you
try to dig it all out, you leave one hell of a hole."  As to
pumping it out, the same scientist explains "You'll be pumping
and treating for a long time just to contain the contamination,
let alone remove it."

The government supports this continued storage by claiming it
owns the groundwater under the reservation.   And surprise,
surprise -- guess what else the gov't tells us?  "No risk to the
public"!  The gov't has posted no signs along the river warning
of the radioactivity -- because "a single drink would not be
hazardous."

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Marianne Dugan  mdugan@oregon.uoregon.edu