Hanford Nuclear Site Leaking Radioactive Waste - August 22, 2012 - Richland, Washington, USA
Channel: ClimateViewer
Date: 2012-08-23

Nuclear Storage Tracker: Waste, Warheads, Processing, and Leaks
http://climateviewer.com/nuclear-storage-leak-map.html


HAZMAT in USA on Wednesday, 22 August, 2012 at 03:18 (03:18 AM) UTC. 8/22/2012
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/site/?pageid=event_desc&edis_id=HZ-20120822-36284-USA

EDIS Number:  HZ-20120822-36284-USA

As part of the biggest, costliest environmental cleanup project in the nation's history - disposing of 53 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state - one thing was supposed to be sure: Waste stored in the sturdy, double-wall steel tanks that hold part of the toxic ooze wasn't going anywhere. But that reassurance has been thrown into question with the discovery of a 3-foot-long piece of radioactive material between the inner and outer steel walls of one of the storage tanks, prompting new worries at the troubled cleanup site. "We're taking it seriously, and we're doing an investigation so we can better understand what it is," Department of Energy spokeswoman Lori Gamache said. The discovery marks the first time material has been found outside the inner wall of one of the site's 28 double-shell tanks, thought to be relatively secure interim storage for the radioactive material generated when Hanford was one of the nation's major atomic production facilities. It opened in 1943 and began a gradual shutdown in 1964. Cleanup started in 1989. The $12.2-billion cleanup project eventually aims to turn most of the waste stored at Hanford into glass rods at a high-tech vitrification plant scheduled to be operational in 2019, assuming the formidable design and engineering hurdles can be overcome. In the meantime, plant engineers have been gathering waste stored in the facility's 149 aging, leaky single-wall storage tanks and redepositing them in the double0-shell tanks for safekeeping. Over the years, more than 1 million gallons of waste has leaked out of 67 single-wall tanks into the surrounding soil.

### UPDATE August 31, 2012  ###
Federal memo criticizes Hanford cleanup contractor 

The company hired to design and build a massive plant at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site should no longer have authority over its design, according to an internal U.S. Department of Energy memo released Tuesday.

By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press

...

It also raises more concerns about the contractor at the center of the mix, Bechtel National Inc., which has come under fire in recent months from critics who say the company has suppressed employee concerns related to the plant's safety and retaliated against whistleblowers.

The memo noted 34 instances where Bechtel National provided information that was incorrect, technically unfeasible or failed to provide the best value to the government, among other things, while designing the $12.3 billion plant at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation.

"The behavior and performance of Bechtel Engineering places unnecessarily high risk that the WTP design will not be effectively completed," Gary Brunson, the Energy Department's engineering director assigned to the project, said of the waste treatment plant in a memo to top Energy Department managers Thursday.

The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, and the site continued to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons through the Cold War. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup expected to last decades.

"This memo details exhaustive and disturbing evidence of why Bechtel should be terminated from this project and subject to an independent investigation," Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group that monitors cleanup efforts, said in a statement.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019011684_apwahanfordplant1stldwritethru.html

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