Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926642.900-contaminated-us-site-faces-catastrophic-nuclear-leak.html ^

[chessplayer]

ONE of "the most contaminated places on Earth" will only get dirtier if the US government doesn't get its act together - clean-up plans are already 19 years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050.

More than 210 million litres of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million litres of waste into the ground.

There are now "serious questions about the tanks' long-term viability," says a Government Accountability Office report, which strongly criticises the US Department of Energy for delaying an $8 billion programme to empty the tanks and treat the waste.

[headstamp 2]

Why don’t we reprocess the waste like France does?

[rlmorel]

I read an interesting proposal a while back that made a lot of sense to me (I think it was in Scientific American)

They proposed filling large, durable containers (that look like 16” shells from a battleship) with radioactive waste, hauling them out the abyssal plains that are scattered throughout the oceans of the world, and dumping them in.

If they are 10-12,000 feet at that point, the “shell” would reach up to 200 mph and plow into the gunk at the bottom. It would penetrate hundreds of feet into the gooey, mucky clay that is found there. These areas are geologically stable (extremely so) and the clay there has been found to have electrostatic properties that would cause it to completely encapsulate the waste.

Of course, we could just continue to let these vats of stuff just sit there in places like Hanford.

We should be researching and investing in modular, mass-built, scalable pebble bed reactor technology. The Chinese are going to do it. We should do it faster and better, make money and become more energy independent.

[dighton]

Nuclear power is finally getting a serious second look, and you can bet your bippy these type stories will only increase.

Yep, take it to the bank.

[rlmorel]

Of course, there is this incident as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin

I recall reading somewhere that this guy would demonstrate to other personnel working on the Manhattan project how separating the top of the beryllium sphere with screwdrivers would cause the fissile reaction to accelerate, and he would demonstrate it with a GM counter by the side. He would pry the thing up ever so slightly, and the GM counter would begin to go wild. I think Feynman talked about this in one of his books, and thought the guy was crazy to do it.

But my memory is a bit hazy on this...

[meyer]

More people have died in Ted Kennedy’s car than in all the U.S. nuclear accidents combined.

Old bumper sticker from the '70's:

Score: Lake Chappaquiddick 1, Nuclear Power 0

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

There are a bunch of really horribly polluted sites in the US.

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/UraniumInNavLand.html

The Church Rock, NM, uranium tailings disaster menaces much of the water supply of Phoenix.

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/372952.aspx

The damned city of Picher, OK, contaminated with lead.

http://tinyurl.com/5bf7cw

The Leadville, CO toxic flood to be.

http://justice.org/PressRoom/FACTS/asbestos/nightline.aspx

The asbestos contamination of Libby, MT

[BADROTOFINGER]

It’s pretty nasty stuff in those tanks. I am part of the work force building the vitrification plant, and we learned just a little about what is down there. Not much danger, but the tanks are deteriorating and this stuff needs to be dealt with before it starts leaking into the Columbia. Nothing to be frightened about (at least not yet) as the existing tanks were built pretty well, but they are leaking and the Feds need to clean up their mess...JFK

[norwaypinesavage]

Billion, trillion, what’s a few orders of magnitude among friends?

[gost2]

Surely this is from the Onion or some such send-up site. Radioactive material is only allowed to leak into the environment in third world caca holes like Russia.

(You say someone told you years and years ago that the US was becoming a third world country? Shazam!)

[JimRed]

I believe that there was a research reactor accident quite some time ago which killed three operators.

I googled it but found nothing matching. But just to be safe I should reword it to "all the U.S. nuclear power plant accidents".

[Bob]

I googled it but found nothing matching. But just to be safe I should reword it to "all the U.S. nuclear power plant accidents".

xDGx nailed it in post #20. The accident occurred in 1961 and happened at a research reactor.