The U.S. Department of Energy has determined one of the single-shell tanks storing radioactive waste at Hanford is leaking around 150 to 300 gallons of liquid per year.(visit the link for the full news article)
DOE officials have not determined the cause of the leak.
Cancers among residents downwind of the Hanford, Washington, plutonium production site.
A community-based health survey for the time period between 1944 and 1995 was collected from 801 individuals who had lived downwind of the U.S. plutonium production facility located in Hanford, Washington. The results of the survey revealed high incidences of all cancers, including thyroid cancer. There were greater than expected numbers of central nervous system tumors and cancers that invaded the female reproductive system (e.g., cancers of the uterus, ovary, cervix, and breast).
4. Hanford’s reactors pumped billions of gallons of radioactive water into the Columbia River making it the “hottest” river in the world during production. Over one and a half trillion gallons of contaminated liquids were also dumped directly into the soil, equivalent to several weeks flow of the Columbia River.
8. Pollution has travelled far from the site. In 1964, a Scripps Oceanographic Research Team detected the radioactive chemical, zinc-65 8,000 times higher than normal in shellfish and squid at Cannon Beach, Oregon, 365 miles from the site. Hanford radionuclides have been detected in the Puget Sound.
•Hanford is the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere and the world's largest environmental cleanup project.
•The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is owned by the federal government and operated by the US Department of Energy (USDOE).
•Cleanup at Hanford is a monumental task estimated by USDOE to cost at least $60 billion and take decades to complete.
•The Hanford Reach (the part of the Columbia flowing through Hanford) is the last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River where tens of thousands of salmon spawn each year. The Hanford Reach was designated as a national monument in 2000.
•Sixty percent (by volume) of the nation's high-level radioactive waste is located at Hanford.
•More than 67 metric tons of plutonium were produced at Hanford, contributing to a global stockpile of nuclear weapons that peaked in the mid-1980s.
•Fifty-three million gallons of high-level radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 huge underground tanks. One third of these aging tanks are known to have leaked more than a million gallons of waste.
•At least 200-square miles of groundwater beneath the site is contaminated and migrating to the Columbia River. An estimated 80-square miles are contaminated above drinking water standards.
•Approximately 1900 waste sites have been identified at Hanford.
•Radioactive and chemical contaminants released from Hanford and other weapons production sites across the nation have caused death and illness, including cancer from radiation and lung disease from beryllium exposure. In 2000, the USDOE acknowledged that workers at nuclear weapons plants may have been made ill, and those who suffered deserved to be compensated. Since then, thousands of claims have been filed.
•Nearly 80 percent of the USDOE's national inventory of spent fuel rods was stored in basins just 400 yards from the Columbia River. The USDOE has moved the disintegrating fuel rods to a central location away from the river, but high-level radioactive debris remains in the basins.
•The USDOE wants to import as much as 200,000 cubic meters of additional waste from around the nation to Hanford. This could double the amount of radioactive waste left at Hanford.
Originally posted by Bronynonymous
What if it was sabotaged? D: Naw I am just kidding. I mean, you never know… Well hopefully we can clean this up before any serious health problems occur.
Six underground tanks that hold a brew of radioactive and toxic waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, federal and state officials said Friday.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the leaking material poses no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take a while — perhaps years — to reach groundwater.
Originally posted by Witness2008
reply to post by kalunom
Hanford has been leaking for years, since 1996 at least. I worked for an organization based in Seattle that had been taking Ariel photos of a stream of waste making it's way toward the Columbia basin. The attorneys I worked for that had been trying to hold the feds responsible got no where, and nothing happened after GE was awarded the management contract. I doubt anything will happen now.
