Most polluted site in N. America: Can nuclear waste ever be cleaned up?

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Errors, Costs Stall Nuclear Waste Project
Radioactive sludge that threatens the Columbia River is still untouched after years of setbacks. The job's complexity has taxed U.S. expertise.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer
September 4, 2006

RICHLAND, Wash. — On a desert plateau seven miles from the Columbia River, a massive federal project to clean up a Cold War-era nuclear weapons plant is deeply troubled.

The effort to avoid a future environmental calamity here, at the most polluted site in North America, is a priority of the Energy Department but has foundered because of engineering mistakes and runaway costs. Fifty-three million gallons of radioactive sludge, most of it the texture of ketchup, is stored in scores of underground tanks, some of which have leaked for years.

The Energy Department and its lead contractor Bechtel Corp. are trying to build a sophisticated waste treatment complex — a small-scale industrial city — that would transform the sludge into radioactive glass. After spending $4 billion since 1989 and getting rid of three previous contractors, the program has yet to transform a gallon of sludge....

***

The project is a long-distance race to empty the leaky tanks and secure the radioactive waste before it becomes a greater menace to the Columbia River. The job is likely to take decades, and the price tag could approach $100 billion.

In January, the Energy Department stopped construction on the two most important parts of the project after it realized it had miscalculated the earthquake risks at the sprawling federal facility, known as the Hanford Site. In recent weeks, it put off any resumption of construction until after October 2007. At best, the plant would be finished in 2019....Hanford raises questions about how effectively the radioactive waste dumps left over from the Cold War can be cleaned up — even with the best technology and with almost unlimited federal spending....

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-hanford4sep04,0,6967796.story?track=mostemailedlink

[NNadir]

1. There must be hundreds of thousands, millions even, who have died.

It's really surprising that the most polluted place on earth has therefore escaped much notice.

[jpak]

2. But..but...but reprocessing and plutonium production are Clean and Green!

and vitrification of high level waste is child's play.

I don't get it...

Could I have been told a "fib"?????

[NMDemDist2]

3. My husband was a phone tech out there and still gets medical surveys

every five years

it's a mess out there

[hunter]

4. Follow the money...

"Cleaning up" this waste is a profitable business.

I can imagine telling my teenagers I'll pay them to clean their rooms, and paying them the money up front. So when I go in there, and their rooms are still a mess, and they tell me some lame excuses, sorry, they couldn't do it, then I guess it's because I didn't pay them enough money.

So let's try that again kids, okay? Here's some more money.

Thanks dad!

We keep playing this game long enough and the problem will eventually solve itself when my kids move out of the house and I throw whatever crap they leave, smelly socks, shoes, etc., in the dumpster... except for their comic book collection equivalents, which I will keep for myself. (If my parents had only kept some of my Star Trek crap, they could have sold it when they retired and paid for a vacation in Hawaii.)

Likewise, in about a thousand years, or maybe less, the mess at Hanford (and yes it is a big frightfully ugly mess) will be much easier to clean up as the most radioactive nasties in it decay.

Hanford is a worst case demonstration of nuclear folly. It's bad, but it's not so bad as some of the messes they made in the Soviet Union.

But mostly, I don't believe it's worthwhile to measure radioactive toxins on a different scale of horror than non-radioactive toxins. If we are looking for toxic sludges we can find them in any river, lake, or ocean front that has been used as a sewer for industry or agriculture. Many non-radioactive industrial and agricultural toxins don't have a "half-life," they are essentially forever, but we pay much less attention to them because they don't make our geiger counters tick. Out of sight, out of mind.

[Nihil]

5. Excellent post - on two important points!

> "Cleaning up" this waste is a profitable business.

Shortly before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats. The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats -- and then people were suddenly queueing up with tails, the city treasury was being drained, and no one seemed to be doing much work. And there still seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of bounty offers, and about the natural instincts of Ankh-Morporkians in any situation involving money: "Tax the rat farms."
(Soul Music - Terry Pratchett)

> But mostly, I don't believe it's worthwhile to measure radioactive
> toxins on a different scale of horror than non-radioactive toxins.
> ...
> Many non-radioactive industrial and agricultural toxins don't have
> a "half-life," they are essentially forever, but we pay much less
> attention to them because they don't make our geiger counters tick.
> Out of sight, out of mind.

The sooner that people learn to override their habit of pigeon-holing
everything, the sooner they will acquire wisdom. Hopefully, this will
be in time to avoid extinction (but I wouldn't bet on it!).

[JohnWxy]

6. The nuclear "experts" are surprised by the complexity of the project.

"Likewise, in about a thousand years, or maybe less, the mess at Hanford (and yes it is a big frightfully ugly mess) will be much easier to clean up as the most radioactive nasties in it decay."

We don't have thousand years to wait and the 'experts' are finding out there's more to thei problem than they anticipated.


"The project is a long-distance race to empty the leaky tanks and secure the radioactive waste before it becomes a greater menace to the Columbia River. The job is likely to take decades, and the price tag could approach $100 billion.

In January, the Energy Department stopped construction on the two most important parts of the project after it realized it had miscalculated the earthquake risks at the sprawling federal facility, known as the Hanford Site. In recent weeks, it put off any resumption of construction until after October 2007. At best, the plant would be finished in 2019.

What remains uncertain is whether the plant's remarkably complex technology will work as planned. Shortly after construction was halted, a team of experts delivered a sobering report that warned of a large number of other potential technical issues that could undermine the plant's operation.

[hunter]

7. And???

How do you know "We don't have thousand years to wait..."?

"Government hydrologists say they have no evidence that any leaked sludge has reached the water table 250 feet below ground, and they cannot calculate when — or whether — the radioactivity will reach the Columbia River."

So the first thing we should probably do is figure out how to calculate this "when - or whether" and then maybe we can respond appropriately. (Although without doing any further research, I suspect some pretty decent calculations have already been done.)

But no, we have to hand over billions of dollars to companies like British Nuclear Fuels and Bechtel (who tend to be big supporters of nuclear power development, by the way) because some bad unpredictable thing "might" happen if we don't.

It's almost superstitious behavior, like throwing a virgin into the volcano to appease the gods.