America's Atomic Time Bomb - Hanford Nuclear Waste Still Poses Serious Risks

[BridgeTheGap]

The disaster at Fukushima has raised questions around the world about nuclear safety. But contamination is much worse in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The former plutonium plant in Hanford, Washington is one of the most contaminated places on earth, and still decades from being cleaned up.

The lambs were born without eyes or mouths. Some had legs that had grotesquely grown together; others had no legs at all. Many were stillborn. Thirty-one were lost in a single night.


On a pasture nearby, a cow was found dead, stiff and with its hooves bizarrely stretched up into the whispering wind. Down by the river, men of the Yakama tribe pulled three-eyed salmon from the Columbia. Trout were covered in cancerous ulcers.

And then the babies started getting sick.

It was in the spring of 1962 that farmer Nels Allison first noticed something was ominously wrong. "Son of a bitch," he said to his wife. Sheep were always "the first to lie down and die" when something was amiss on Allison's farm near Basin City, a rural town near the Columbia River in the far northwestern corner of the continental United States. He started referring to that deadly night "the Night of the Little Demons."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=115

[ret5hd]

1. Your link is broken

[crickets]

2. Link:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,752944,00.html

Horrifying.

[suffragette]

3. And an active nuclear plant is on site at Hanford

called by the pointedly non-nuclear name: Columbia Generating Station.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/environment/category/hanford/page/2/

More than 4 paragraphs total here, but some are quoted info from other sources and only 4 are those written for the article.

State’s nuke plant chemically messy

Officials at Energy Northwest cringe a little when you say their nuclear plant is located at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. They seem to fear being tainted by the massive waste site’s fouled reputation.

But when I got a press release this afternoon from the state Ecology Department announcing a $120,000 fine because of Energy Northwest’s chemically messy ways, it sounded oddly Hanford-esque. (And for the uninitiated, Hanford is super polluted from waste spilled, dumped and leaked in the effort to build radioactive bombs.)

From the release:

During the six week inspection, Ecology and EPA found industrial chemicals and hazardous wastes improperly labeled and stored in old storage sheds, wastes left inside laboratory work stations, unreported spills of industrial chemicals, and chemical waste abandoned around both sites. In addition, serious concerns were identified with programs for training employees to safely handle hazardous waste materials….

“The improper storage of these hazardous materials is a serious violation,” said Jane Hedges, Nuclear Waste Program Manager. “The unacceptable training of employees, the lack of reporting of spills of dangerous substances into the environment and the improper storage of waste escalated our concerns about lack of management and safety oversight at Energy Northwest.”

But perhaps the best part came with the response from Energy Northwest (which is, remember, the new name for Washington Public Power Supply System or WPPSS, a.k.a. “whoops”).

From the Associated Press:

Energy Northwest spokesman Brad Peck says the utility recognizes there are areas for improvement.

No word on whether Energy Northwest will appeal the fine.


Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant



In addition to being in an active earthquake zone, these are located downstream from dams:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x653404