Glow, River, Glow - Radioactive Leaks and Plumbers at Hanford

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/


The outback of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington State is called the T-Farm, a rolling expanse of high desert sloping toward the last untamed reaches of the Columbia River. The T stands for tanks, huge single-hulled containers buried some fifty feet beneath basalt volcanic rock and sand holding the lethal detritus of Hanford's fifty-year run as the nation's H-bomb factory.

Those tanks had an expected lifespan of 35 years; the radioactive gumbo inside them has a half-life of 250,000 years. Dozens of those tanks have now started to corrode and leak, releasing the most toxic material on earth, plutonium and uranium-contaminated sludge and liquid, on an inexorable path toward the Columbia, the world's most productive salmon fishery and the source of irrigation water for the farms and orchards of the Inland Empire, centered on Spokane in eastern Washington.

Internal documents from the Department of Energy and various private contractors working at Hanford reveal that at least one million gallons of radioactive sludge has already leaked out of at least 67 different tanks. Those tanks and others continue to leak and that the leaks are getting much larger.

-snip-

A few hundred yards away, a tank called TY-102, the third largest tank at Hanford, is also leaking. Radioactive water is draining out of this single-hulled container and a broken subsurface pipe into what geologists call the "vadose zone", the stratum of subsurface soil just above the water table. In an internal 1998 report, the Grand Junction Office of the DOE detected significant contamination 42 to 52 feet below the surface and concluded in a memo to Hanford managers that the "high levels of gamma radiation" came from "a subsurface source" of Cesium-137, which likely resulted from leakage from tank TY-102".

This alarming report was swiftly buried by Hanford officials. So too was the evidence of leakage at tanks TY-103 and TY-106. Instead, the DOE publicly declared that portion of the tank farm to be "controlled, clean and stable".
-snip-
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moving youself/family far away seems like a logical survival tactic

not eating produce grown with the poisoned water another tactic.

owning radiation detection devises another.

[ktlyon]

1. kick

this important

[hunter]

2. It's ironic -- this stretch of the Columbia is "untamed" because of this.

Human beings are a hell of a lot more dangerous to the natural environment than nuclear waste.

If not for this, the place would be covered with toxic human farmland.

The ants and lizards of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation rejoice!

[progressoid]

3. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[Raksha]

4. Kicking in memory of my husband, a Hanford casualty.

It's a long, sad story I don't want to go into right now.
:kick:

[freeplessinseattle]

5. This is very disturbing!

What were they planning on doing after 35 years? Did they even care? wtf?