Tank at Hanford [WA state] Leaking Radioactive Liquid

Tank at Hanford [WA state] Leaking Radioactive Liquid

www.king5.com

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.

DOE officials have not determined the cause of the leak.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.tvw.org
articles.latimes.com

Thankfully I live nowhere near this area but I hope that anyone nearby stays updated and keeps us up to date on the goings-on.

A live news feed from the governor is happening now at TVW, link supplied above..

This has reportedly been leaking since 2005, not a good situation! Local water wells and soil may be affected.

www.king5.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The Governor (Inslee) is saying that there is no immediate threat to the public and is more concerned about the long term effects.

Yet there "is suggestion that this leak has been going on for years".

My take on this news conference, is that they have no idea.

This is no longer an accident waiting to happen....looks like it is here....just a year ago they were talking about the monumental cleanup effort at Hanford

Hanford, WA: Monunental Cleanup at Hanford Nuclear Waste Site

I live near the Hanford reservation. This has been a nightmare waiting to happen for nearly fifty years...or since the end of WWII...

Insley is an idiot. A status quo maintaining idiot. There is a problem, there is a danger, and it needs to damned well be dealt with.

I told him as much in an email letter this morning. Not that I expect anything to come of it...

No immediate danger, my little white butt.

Wonder how long its been going on. There is an elevation in cancer rates in areas downwind from it.

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).

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Flag and Star. Always knew i hated living in Eastern Washington for a reason....

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.

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.

Looking around a bit for more info on Hanford I found this site:

hanfordchallenge.org

It includes a list of news articles relating to Hanford dating back to January of 2010. Many interesting, and disturbing, reads. I had no idea until today that this place even existed.

One of the links goes to a .pdf showing 10 facts that may change the way you think about Hanford. I strongly suggest reading that.

A couple of examples from that .pdf:

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.

The recently discovered 150-300 gallons leaking from this one container per year may not sound like much, may just be Insley's "no immediate threat"...but these stories dating back decades tell a different story.

Thanks for bringing this to light OP. SnF. I don't think they stabilized any of those tanks in 2005. This is one of the most horrid things. I have never figured out why in the heck they put this sh#t so close to waterways. Here are some more facts on Hanford. I realize it's a lot of text but people need to know what's going on, on the West Coast.

www.psr.org...

•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.

Another reason to NOT support nuclear power (in it's current state). There are so many nuclear power advocates who seem to blindly support this "clean" energy without doing the research and finding out that this nuclear waste stuff does not go away for thousands of years.

... And as usual, the status quo marches forward. We are (imo) on the edge of an "adapt or die" cliff. I think many will blindly go off the cliff very soon.

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.

If this leak has been happening since the 90s; there are already people with cancer from this debacle.

www.cancer.org...

In the meanwhile…….There is talks about "irresponsible and dangerous" nuclear Iran.

Funny as hell...

Originally posted by amkia
In the meanwhile…….There is talks about "irresponsible and dangerous" nuclear Iran.

Funny as hell...

Yep, hypocrisy is the way of maintaining the status quo, sadly, and is accepted laughably, with tears. The agenda is first mentioned, then manipulated, and then manifested into reality. The people are starting to catch on though, thankfully. The modus operandi has been repeated too many times for some to ignore, and at the same time, the first time for many people ignorant to how cointelpro works, or even what it is.

Nothing to worry about folks....it'll take years to reach ground water

UPDATED HERE......

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.

yahoo news

reply to post by captaintyinknots


There has been an upsurge of cancer downwind of Hanford for the past half century. "Downwinders" they're called. My mother was one, and possibly my fathers mother, as well. My own brush with cancer, though much less likely, could be connected.

But what the hey, Gov. Insley, in all his infinite wisdom, says there is no immediate danger... Really, guv? Really??? Where the hell have you been for the past half century, or so? Medical history says otherwise. These tanks have, possibly, been leaking for some ten years, maybe more.

When they say everything is OK then that's the time to run....

2nd line

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.

Very sorry to hear about how nothing is being done. If anything more people can be aware of the risks of living "too close", not even addressing the leak into the Columbia River. The governor should be addressing the health concern of past leaks not pushing it to a later concern.

Judging by the people I've came n contact with(especially a child, mentioned before on ATS)or have heard of that have cancer, -more lately-etc. from growing up in the area, I suggest if at all possible stay clear to even move if you can further from that part of the Tri-Cities or beyond. Possibly even research into use of potassium-iodide (KI) supplements, or “thyroid blockers".

Inslee just announced that there are 6 underground tanks leaking. How could there possibly be no threat to the public when the burial sites are in relatively close proximity to the largest underground water source in North America?