There is so much wrong with that story as posted by the Tri City Herald it’s hard to know where to start. First the tunnel is 400’ long not the cave in, that was 20’. Next, this was a tunnel used to transfer plutonium and enriched uranium between points within the finishing plant. The waste in the tunnel system is not what most would know as waste, it is actually the equipment used in shuttling the nuclear material within the tunnel system, the rail cars and such.
This equipment is highly radioactive and has been out of service for decades. At this point most of the finishing plant has been dismantled, raised to the ground, and decontaminated. There is one building left that is currently being decontaminated and equipment removed. That building had the highest radioactive contamination and new technologies had to be developed to provided improved health and safety protections for the workers.
The tunnel areas are a challenge and those are slated to be addressed after the above ground facility dismantling is complete. More than likely Hanford is now reassessing the timeline since the cave in. Cleaning up Hanford is a monumental project that is already in it’s third decade. Only the U.S. has made a commitment like this to restore one of the most contaminated places on earth.
“Fifty-three dump trucks full of soil filled the 400-square foot hole over the tunnel containing radioactive waste stored on the former plutonium production site near Richland in southern Washington.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/hanford-tunnel-collapse/526041/
There’s a picture (twitter) on that page that shows the 20’ x 20’ opening. The article says that the millions of gallons leaking out the massive radioactive sludge tanks are a bigger concern at Hanford. :(
The waste in the tunnel system is not what most would know as waste, it is actually the equipment used in shuttling the nuclear material within the tunnel system, the rail cars and such.
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Actually, those rail cars were filled with radioactive material:
“ Eight flatbed railroad cars loaded with radioactive material were parked inside when the entrance was sealed in 1965.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/05/12/sinkhole-collapsed-hanford-nuke-site/319098001/
They were warned that the wood beams supporting the tunnels had lost 1/3 of their strength by 1980 but did nothing. Then:
“A group of academic experts, working under contract to the department, said more alarmingly in a 1,969-page report in August 2015 that the roof of the tunnel in question had been seriously weakened and that a “partial or complete failure” could expose individuals even 380 feet away to dangerous levels of radiation.”
And still they did nothing. The story of nuclear energy. Same with Fukushima.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/05/12/20862/repeated-warnings-preceded-collapse-hanford-tunnel-storing-deadly-wastes