Nuclear waste tank OK'd to keep leaking for 1 year

[bananas]

Source: Associated Press

A new deal allows a radioactive waste storage tank to continue leaking for more than a year before its contents are pumped out at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the nation's most polluted nuclear site.

The deal to pump nuclear waste tank AY-102, announced late Monday, is between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Washington State Department of Ecology. Under the deal, pumping of the double-walled tank would not begin until 2016, and it would take a year to complete.

The deal has outraged critics of Hanford, which for decades made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons.

"Every day this tank leaks creates additional dangers," said Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a long-time Hanford watchdog group. "Federal and state laws require that leaking tanks of any toxic waste must be emptied immediately. The Energy Department should not get special dispensation just because Hanford officials failed to take action over the past three years to have equipment in place to remove the wastes or to plan to build new storage tanks."

<snip>

Read more: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Nuclear-waste-tank-OKd-to-keep-leaking-for-1-year-277658371.html

[sakabatou]

1. WTF?

[cstanleytech]

2. To quote the article

"The Energy Department said the leak is between the walls of the giant tank and has not reached the environment."

[sakabatou]

7. Not yet anyway, if it's not contained.

[cstanleytech]

8. Its still contained as the vessel is two walled.

Though you would think that they would move faster in transferring it just in case but

[Tikki]

3. You all need to know that all this crap going on at Hanford has been going on for 60 years...

They have never had a truly safe plan for nuclear waste storage and they never plan on doing so.

It goes on and on and the tax payers pay on and on.


Tikki

[hunter]

11. It's a bizarre symbiosis between activists, contractors, and politicians.

The cleanup party never ends, the federal government keeps paying.

But I suppose that system might be better than whatever plutonium production messes exist in places like the former Soviet Union, China, or maybe most frighteningly today, North Korea...

[Tikki]

12. If the tax payers were funding the activist bet this would reach a conclusion.

This storage and cleanup going on and on and on has always felt like some back room deal, to me.


Tikki

[iemitsu]

4. What a deal?

I can assure you that the good citizens of Washington State were not asked for their input on this deal.

[Generic Other]

5. No one asked me

I would say HELL NO.

[iemitsu]

6. No one asked me either.

Maybe those, making the deal, ought to be forced to relocate their families to Hanford for the duration of the "deal".

[Tikki]

9. Ever hear of "Oil Feeds My Family, Coal Feeds My Family etc.?"..."NUKE feeds" their families...

Not as many as you would think are even concerned about NUKE waste problems in that area of Washington State.

Turn blind eyes and all.


Tikki

[iemitsu]

13. Yes, those, who live n the tri-cities,

turn a blind eye toward the potential problems associated with the nuclear industry.
The last time I went through that spot there were radioactive mice in town. The locals did not react at all.

[blkmusclmachine]

10. ,

,