Nation's Most Ambitious Project To Clean Up Nuclear Weapons Waste Has Stalled At Hanford (latimes.com) 160
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: The Energy Department's most environmentally important and technically ambitious project to clean up Cold War nuclear weapons waste has stalled, putting at jeopardy an already long-delayed effort to protect the Columbia River in central Washington. In a terse letter last week, state officials said the environmental project is at risk of violating key federal court orders that established deadlines after past ones were repeatedly missed. Two multibillion-dollar industrial facilities intended to turn highly radioactive sludge into solid glass at the Hanford nuclear site have been essentially mothballed. Construction was halted in 2012 because of design flaws and Energy Department managers have foundered in finding alternatives, according to the letter that threatens new litigation.
The department has committed to removing and disposing all of the underground tank waste by 2047, though Washington's Department of Ecology director Maia Bellon said the state doesn't think that is possible at current funding levels. The six-page letter was addressed to Anne White, chief of environmental management at the Energy Department. The Times obtained the letter from Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group that has closely monitored the contaminated facility. "This is clearly setting the table for litigation," said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the group. "The Energy Department is going to miss all of these deadlines." Carpenter noted that in February, the Energy Department issued a new cost estimate to remediate the entire Hanford site, taking it from $110 billion to as much as $660 billion, a cost increase that has staggered Congress and has fueled sentiment to cut short the cleanup goals. "They are walking away from important elements of the cleanup," he said. Bellon has a two-part proposal for the Energy Department to consider. "First, there would be a new round of negotiations over the next six to nine months," the report says. "Second, the state wants a low-level treatment system operating by no later than 2023, full production of high-level waste glass by 2036 and renewed commitments to removing all tank waste."
If the Energy Department doesn't accept the state's proposal or the negotiation does not result in an acceptable cleanup program, the state "reserves our right" to pursue action in court, Bellon said in the letter.
The department has committed to removing and disposing all of the underground tank waste by 2047, though Washington's Department of Ecology director Maia Bellon said the state doesn't think that is possible at current funding levels. The six-page letter was addressed to Anne White, chief of environmental management at the Energy Department. The Times obtained the letter from Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group that has closely monitored the contaminated facility. "This is clearly setting the table for litigation," said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the group. "The Energy Department is going to miss all of these deadlines." Carpenter noted that in February, the Energy Department issued a new cost estimate to remediate the entire Hanford site, taking it from $110 billion to as much as $660 billion, a cost increase that has staggered Congress and has fueled sentiment to cut short the cleanup goals. "They are walking away from important elements of the cleanup," he said. Bellon has a two-part proposal for the Energy Department to consider. "First, there would be a new round of negotiations over the next six to nine months," the report says. "Second, the state wants a low-level treatment system operating by no later than 2023, full production of high-level waste glass by 2036 and renewed commitments to removing all tank waste."
If the Energy Department doesn't accept the state's proposal or the negotiation does not result in an acceptable cleanup program, the state "reserves our right" to pursue action in court, Bellon said in the letter.
$500B military share (Score:3, Insightful)
of the clean-up seems proportionately right. After all, Trump does want more spending on military.
Re:$500B military share (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, looking at the history of the cleanup, delaying and stalling and underfunding seems to be a bipartisan affair. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. Arguably Reagan, Carter, Ford & Nixon as well, but they predated the initial plan to clean up the site (though frankly, it should've been started in Jonson's terms)...
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The simple fact is that cleanup of the rural West has never been a priority for members of Congress from the East of either party.
A majority of land in the western states is owned by the federal government. The western states are not much larger than the eastern states once that is accounted for.
Further, while Congress has authority over the mess they made, they have no responsibility. So why should they do anything?
Re: $500B military share (Score:1)
Did your parents fail you, or did you fail them?
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Re: $500B military share (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember Bush Derangement Syndrome?
No, I've never heard this phrase before. So I looked it up: apparently it's from a neoconservative columnist named Krauthammer who who hated Trump. I am slightly amused by this.
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Remember Bush Derangement Syndrome?
No, I've never heard this phrase before. So I looked it up: apparently it's from a neoconservative columnist named Krauthammer who who hated Trump. I am slightly amused by this.
I remember it first hand.
GWB was not by any means any kind of "extremist" or "ultraconservative", yet leftists were sent into instant foaming at the mouth at the mention of his name.
"Bush Derangement Syndrome" was a very apt term for the phenomenon.
And TDS is the natural neologism for today's similar derangement.
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How about debt? Maybe you care about money? Bush managed to increase the national debt in his tenure, during an economic high, just as much as Obama did during the worst recession in a hundred years.
And yet, you're right, comparatively speaking GWB does seem almost reasonable...
Re: $500B military share (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump may have inherited this mess, developed over decades by his predecessors, but let's remain clear: he is the President, he is the commander in chief, and it is his Energy Department that is not meeting its commitments. So how can you call this "the most unrelated topic"?
A two-sentence comment, with equal shares of snark and insight, hardly counts as a tirade.
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and it was Obama's energy department before that, and it will ??? energy department after Trump not meeting its commitments. Trump is one guy and the USA has a lot fish in the frying pan. Its not like he or even his cabinet level people are directly involved in every activity of every agency. I'd be surprised if Trump has even heard the name Hanford more than handful of times since he took office.
Sure the buck stops at Trumps desk but the idea he has much if any role in this is a reach. Its all so tied
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The President is ultimately responsible for what their administration does while they are in office.
Even if our current occupant of the white house doesn't believe that and wants to blame everyone else that doesn't change the fact the buck stops with him on everything. Past presidents have honorably taken blame for things they weren't involved in, Obama famously took the blame for something he wasn't even aware of and apologized to the American people for it.
This in my opinion is all about honor, past presi
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What!? Obama was still blaming Bush for the bad economy when he left office. And, I bet you buy into that line that his administration was "scandal free".
The truth is, as stated in the summary, that plant construction stopped in 2012. Obama had four years to get Congress to do something about it, but, as once again stated in the summary, CONGRESS is balking at the $660B price tag.
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Yeah, but Obama isn't president right now. Just because he didn't do something about it doesn't mean it's fine that Trump won't either.
And Trump does not determine what money is spent for or what laws are passed.
Look no further than the two parties in Congress who have had more than 60 years to fix this. It comes down to two, Democrats and Republicans, all of them.
Re:So the USA is just like Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell us again how Capitalism wins...
This is a mismanaged government project to clean up a mess made by a previous mismanaged government project.
Blaming the problem on "capitalism" is absurd.
Re:So the USA is just like Russia (Score:5, Funny)
Blaming the problem on "capitalism" is absurd.
I'm waiting for the invisible hand of the free market to clean it up.
Re: So the USA is just like Russia (Score:1)
Government project is not free market, the opposite actually. If they auctioned the job to a lowest bidder in an open auction, with most or all the payment upon job completion, sure, but is not the case here. Then investors of the winner cover the costs, and get paid when it's all done. But, "the people" are against any investors making such money, so the government decides they can do it themselves, and estimated cost of $110B blows up to $660B.
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"If they auctioned the job to a lowest bidder in an open auction, with most or all the payment upon job completion, sure, but is not the case here. "
Indeed, here people cash out billions and never even tackled the job.
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"I'm waiting for the invisible hand of the free market to clean it up."
Offer a $10 Billion X-Prize type bounty for a workable solution from the private sector.
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I'm waiting for the invisible hand of the free market to clean it up.
Why would it? The invisible hand of the market only chases profitable ventures.
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Why would it? The invisible hand of the market only chases profitable ventures.
I'd watch a reality show where they clean up the environment. Especially if they have the children of the privileged class doing manual labor.
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Moreover, it was a fine example of filling a very critical national need, for a legitimate function of the government - far more legitimate than most government programs.
It is almost certainly that hundreds of thousands to millions of people are alive today, that wouldn't be, had the US not taken the lead in nuclear weapons development.
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the japanese had already surrendered. There was no need to drop the bombs on japan. It was simply to scare the soviets. This is FACT in every country but the USA. Saying lives were saved by dropping nuclear bombs is the height of american arrogance. It was a horrible war crime perpetrated on civilians that the usa has never really owned up to in full.
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Right, we should have starved them out. That way, millions would die, while the elite hung on till the end, rather than just a hundred thousand.
Thank goodness we didn't have great humanitarians such as yourself back in the day.
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To the rest of us, both American and Japanese, it was clear that Japan was not inclined to surrender as expr
Capitalism or Not (Score:1, Insightful)
The most amusing things about you, the Shrugging Atlas Acolytes, is that your blind spots are so blindingly obvious.
Your so-called Capitalism just works because it hangs off Mother State big teats, that Mother State you abhor so much.
In the current case, nuclear energy is financially viable just because it is strategically significant to the military. Without all that tax money sucked up and pumped through the military, nuclear energy production would be a (financial) loser.
This is *orders of magnitude* big
Re: Capitalism or Not (Score:1)
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Re:So the USA is just like Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
Its amazing isn't it. This is the problem with democracy is a whole lot of people base their opinions about everything off handful of 5 sec sound bites. This is why I always give people an earful when they talk about increasing voter turn out. High turn out for high turn outs sake isn't a good thing. It just means a bunch of uninformed idiots who can't explain the difference between a private corporation and government program run out on vote for team red or team blue because someone else told them to do so. It does not serve the public interest in anyway shape or form; because uninformed/misinformed voting does not help choose good candidates.
Yes everyone should have the right to vote - No voting is NOT a responsibility its right, the most responsible thing to do is only exercise it if you intend to do so responsibly. Its no different than gun ownership. If you plan to secure it properly keep control of it and use it consistently inline with best safety practices by all means get one, if you are going to treat it like a toy please don't get a gun you'll hurt yourself or someone else.
If you want to vote please do but only if you are going to take the time to understand at least the major issues that appear likely to be acted on within the next term of office. Otherwise you should really stay home.
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Get rid of large campaign donations, lobbyist writing legi
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This isn't an issue of Capitalism, But in proper governance.
Capitalism works fine, but it needs good governance, otherwise the "Invisible Hand of Capitalism" will slap you in the face.
While uncontrolled capitalism will correct itself in the long run, it normally corrects itself after things have gone too far, and a lot of people would be hurt in the process.
There needs to be enough freedom for people to try to do new things, make some mistakes to allow successes. However you just can't open the door for a
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stop saying capitalism! This has not a thing to do with markets. Most of this waste is the product of state run weapons research and production; its state run facility and state run clean up project.
The only capitalism involved here AT ALL is contractors bidding to do work. The only alternative would be for government to hire and administer all those people directly and its far from clear that would help get anything done let alone be any cheaper.
"Stalled" is misleading (Score:4, Informative)
Stall is overall a very inappropriate term to use. Yes, progress is very very slow for a myriad of reasons, but there is progress.
The high level waste is one portion that can be reasonably be called stalled. Not just for on-Hanford reasons (WTP progress), but also since even if we were vitrifying waste right now we would have nowhere to send it. There is no high-level waste repository since Yucca Mountain was defunded by Pres. Obama.
Low-level waste treatment is going to be happening soon, and it appears that it will likely happen based on the current timeline.
Other cleanup efforts around the site are ongoing. Water treatment to remove organic solvents and gigantic plumes of hexavalent chromium. Solid nuclear waste that was buried around the site is being cleaned up. Building 324 staff are training workers to remove a large plutonium plume that's a couple hundred yards from the Columbia River. Tanks are being characterized and closed (albeit slowly). Other options for low-level waste treatment are being actively explored (removing the cesium and grouting, to ship it to a repository in Texas), though Washington opposes this currently.
Things go slow on Hanford, but they do move.
Mod parent UP: "Stalled" is misleading. (Score:5, Informative)
I knew one of the managers of the Hanford effort. The effort has been under-managed and under-funded, in my opinion. Also, there has been has been ENORMOUS ignorance about the underlying issues. Almost all people voted into elected government positions have very little or no technical knowledge. Hanford Cleanup managers have a conflict of interest; they don't want to communicate the extreme complexity of the project, and the lack of sufficient progress.
Consider the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster [wikipedia.org] and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster [wikipedia.org]. Humans do not manage well enough for it to make sense to have nuclear power plants.
The problems are FAR greater than have been communicated to the public. Partly that is because news writers don't have technical knowledge.
A few facts:
Hanford Site [britannica.com]. The site was mostly closed in 1971, 58 years ago. The cleanup is "expected to continue into the 2040s".
Hanford cleanup costs triple. And that's the 'best case scenario' in a new report. [tri-cityherald.com] (Feb. 1, 2019)
About Cleanup of the Hanford Site. [hanford.gov]
That kiind of nuclear power cannot be made acceptable. The waste will stay poisonous for centuries. No one can guarantee that a storage site will stay safe. Maybe Nuclear Fusion [nuclearconnect.org] will become possible and be safe.
This is just a short Slashdot comment. Far more time should be put into making all the issues clear.
Possibly 83 more years of Hanford cleanup!!! (Score:3)
Here is one example: I didn't do enough research. The newspaper article I mentioned, Hanford cleanup costs triple. And that's the 'best case scenario' in a new report [tri-cityherald.com] (Feb. 1, 2019), has a much more clear description of the future:
The low estimate: "The assumptions included in the $323 billion estimate would require peak annual spending of nearly $9 billion a year, with cl
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What you completely fail to mention is your talk of delays and costs is that the biggest source of delays and costs is the people who keep suing and forcing redesigns based on anti-science ignorant fear-mongering and flat out lies. You speak of "ENORMOUS ignorance"? You demonstrate it perfectly.
The anti-nuclear crowd, which you are so accurately representing, is primarily responsible for the need of the existence of the Hartford cleanup project in the first place! If facilities to refine and reuse "nucle
Re:Mod parent UP: "Stalled" is misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
That kiind of nuclear power cannot be made acceptable. The waste will stay poisonous for centuries. No one can guarantee that a storage site will stay safe. Maybe Nuclear Fusion [nuclearconnect.org] will become possible and be safe. This is just a short Slashdot comment. Far more time should be put into making all the issues clear.
Ah, so we can't have nuclear power because a nuclear weapons crash program 70 years ago created a mess. Got it...so we should all just die from climate change because of this?
This is a human caused problem. Not that human's can't manage a program of this complexity (we manage more complex things all the time) but because when politicians and lobbyists (environmental variety) get involved we can't. The real issue here is the government management and environmental lobbying of this program ran it into the ground. We know how to treat the waste. We know how to store the waste. But the interference from non-technical types who make money from getting the public into hysterics won't let us do it properly. So instead we waste money on energy technologies we know won't work and instead put our energy into smearing nuclear power with the sins of nuclear weapons programs.
Do you have any idea what this waste is? Because its of a type that no nuclear power plant has ever created. This waste is from extracting plutonium using acid from spent fuel rods which containing Pu breed from U-238. That's not something any power plant does. Its something no civilian power plant would ever do. But because of this project we can't ever have nuclear power. Got it. Do you really hate humans that much?
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Two huge nuclear accidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima are not enough to teach us to get rid of nuclear technology? Hint: They failed for different reasons, and they did not know before it happened. We shall admit that we do not know very much and have to be careful not to overestimate ourselves and contaminate our environment we need to live and survive. It is possible to have 100% renewable clean energy from the sun and winds: cheaper and with far lower risk. There is a culture of lying and downplay in the
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Hint: the radiation at Fukushima did not kill a single person.
Another hint: fossil fuel energy (the only way nuclear energy can be replaced in the next few decades, until renewables+batteries mature some more) kills thousands of people every day.
Why do you insist on the alternative that kills more people?
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Hint: the radiation at Fukushima did not kill a single person.
Another hint: fossil fuel energy (the only way nuclear energy can be replaced in the next few decades, until renewables+batteries mature some more) kills thousands of people every day.
Why do you insist on the alternative that kills more people?
You are wrong.As I'm sure you consider yourself a font of knowledge, why do you purposely lie? Do lies make nuclear power better?
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You are wrong.As I'm sure you consider yourself a font of knowledge, why do you purposely lie? Do lies make nuclear power better?
Asserting someone is wrong says nothing but "I disagree and am going to be an ass about it."
He is right. There have been zero deaths due to radiation at Fukushima. [wikipedia.org]
4.3 million people a year die due to fossil fuels. [wikipedia.org] Thus thousands a day is achieved. 11 thousand a day makes reinterpretation by eliminating this or that does not even come close to making the original statement not true. Reinterpretation wont help.
The only claim that can be said to not be proven is the idea that nuclear energy is the only near-te
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Ah, so we can't have nuclear power because a nuclear weapons crash program 70 years ago created a mess.
Well, that and all the other civilian accidents, and the enormous cost even when everything goes to plan.
so we should all just die from climate change because of this?
If you want nuclear to be the solution then you will have to accept countries like Iran having it. I'm guessing you would prefer they didn't have an active, well funded, modern nuclear programme.
If you want nuclear power then you need to offer solutions to these problems.
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Well, that and ALL the other civilian accidents, and the enormous cost even when everything goes to plan.
By my count there have been two. Frankly, that's not a bad accident rate. They were bad but are being dealt with.
If you want nuclear to be the solution then you will have to accept countries like Iran having it. I'm guessing you would prefer they didn't have an active, well funded, modern nuclear programme.
No we don't. Just because we have nuclear weapons doesn't mean we have to allow further proliferation. And us abandoning nuclear power does nothing to change the ambitions of tyrants. They will continue to try to attain it because the allure is too strong. So we must continue with economic restrictions and the occasional air strike until such a time that a regime that is not obsessed with nucle
Re:Mod parent UP: "Stalled" is misleading. (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it fascinating how this tactic has become such a common and pervasive "debate technique" in the last few years. It's always accompanied by condescension as well. My guess its taught in universities. That's not the first place I ever saw it, that was the internet. But it is the first place I saw someone use it in person. Usually in polite company you run the risk of getting punched for talking like that.
At the risk of feeding your over inflated ego, I will reply. Of course that's not the only metric. But that isn't what we were talking about. Your post is a classic example of moving the goal posts. OP's was trying to frame the narrative as if nuclear accidents are common. They are not. There are other metrics in play but lets not pretend that superfund sites are the exclusive purview of nuclear accidents. There have been far more environmental disasters that have absolutely nothing to do with nuclear power.
Your post is anti-science. You are bad and should feel bad.
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At the risk of feeding your over inflated ego, I will reply. Of course that's not the only metric. But that isn't what we were talking about. Your post is a classic example of moving the goal posts.
Allow me to illustrate the problem. If I am running a meeting, and people get off onto a side road, I bring them back to what we were discussing. I've been in meetings where people such as yourself lead us there. Ego? No, working at a goal.
That some use a metric of lives lost is intellectually dishonest. Because there are a lot of other issues. When a nuc plant has an unanticipated disassembly, the impact is rather drastic. Lost use of land, lives uprooted, removal of real estate that might otherwise be
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You are no Cassandra, you are a chicken little.
Oh bullshit. If you actually knew anything about Fukushima, you would know that it was 100 percent going to fail. The seawalls were not high enough to block Tsunami that was simply going to happen. Historical accounts and Geoligical debris trails said that unless plate tectonics had stopped, a Tsunami that would top the wall. So you must be in favor of building plants that are doomed, or are you going to play the no true Nuclear plant card? Then the hairbrained tactic of putting the emergency generators i
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That kiind of nuclear power cannot be made acceptable. The waste will stay poisonous for centuries. No one can guarantee that a storage site will stay safe. Maybe Nuclear Fusion [nuclearconnect.org] will become possible and be safe. This is just a short Slashdot comment. Far more time should be put into making all the issues clear.
Ah, so we can't have nuclear power because a nuclear weapons crash program 70 years ago created a mess. Got it...so we should all just die from climate change because of this?
You are missing the point. He is correct in that after nuclear accidents, we're pretty good at finding out what happened, and why. There is a common denominator. Humans
Let me go on record as saying that it is entirely possible to build safe nuclear power generating facilities. But we won't. Whether the proximate causes are bean counters that demand costing that keeps safety from happening, Managers that cut corners to make deadlines, corrupt contractors that fake testing requirements, Corrupt exchange of
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Ah, so we can't have nuclear power because a nuclear weapons crash program 70 years ago created a mess. Got it...so we should all just die from climate change because of this?
Your logical fallacy is false dichotomy. Solar+Wind+Battery is cheaper than Nuclear and not only has the same availability, but superior load-following ability.
This is a human caused problem. Not that human's can't manage a program of this complexity (we manage more complex things all the time) but because when politicians and lobbyists (environmental variety) get involved we can't.
Thanks, you just explained better than I could why nuclear power is a dumb idea here, on this planet, today.
This is bullshit (Score:2)
US nuclear fuel reprocessing projects are simply pathetic compared with Russia or France.
The US does no nuclear reprocessing to extract uranium or plutonium from fuel.
The US MOX facility was cancelled.
The US uses no high temperature reactor to burn up actinides.
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Yes, let's consider them. It's very likely we've had more deaths driving to work this morning than were killed by both of those accidents combined (it's early, so we may not have hit the "more deaths" part yet. Wait three hours for the west coast to get into full swing). In the USA, of course. About 50x as
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That said, there is a lot of pork barrel politics mixed in with this. Washington state is demanding a very large share of Federal money for its economy - maybe a lot more than is really needed.
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The high level waste is one portion that can be reasonably be called stalled. Not just for on-Hanford reasons (WTP progress), but also since even if we were vitrifying waste right now we would have nowhere to send it.
If only there was a well understood way to process the waste which involved removing the usable fuels and separating the groups of dangerous elements by remediation method which WASN'T MADE FUCKING ILLEGAL BY CONGRESS in the name of non-proliferation.
Expectations. (Score:1)
OK. So the state thinks the Feds are going to do what?, fine themselves?
While there were certainly federal benefits, the direct economic benefit was local, so why doesn't Washington state also simply threaten themselves with fines?
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OK. So the state thinks the Feds are going to do what?, fine themselves?
This happens all the time. A federal department sues another federal department, and the court orders the latter to pay a fine to the first.
The FLRA has sued other depts many times for labor violations.
The USDA has sued the EPA, and vice versa.
The EPA has also sued DoD.
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because no rocket has ever failed right? Because rockets are not massive tanks or blocks of volatile energy dense chemistry for which many of the failure modes are quite bomb like right?
That plan gets bandied around a lot but the adults realize its as good a way to spread waste over 100s of miles as allowing another fukushima type accident is.
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Because it's incredibly difficult to hit the sun [youtube.com]. Much easier to orbit than hit.
To Clean Up Nuclear Weapons Waste? (Score:2)
Really? How?
Unless you want to wait long enough, you can only repackage and bury it!
Re:To Clean Up Nuclear Weapons Waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? How?
RTFA: By mixing the waste with molten glass.
Unless you want to wait long enough, you can only repackage and bury it!
Repackaging and burying it can make a big difference.
If you had radioactive waste in your backyard, would you prefer it was in a rusty leaking barrel tossed in a shallow ditch, or in a vitrified solid buried 1000 meters below the water table?
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The problem with nuclear waste versus regular waste is the timescale. That nuclear waste is still going to be dangerous 100,000 to 1 million years from now. The USA won't exist that far in the future, no nation ever has. The people that live here in 100K to 1million years probably won't even speak the same language and there is a chance that these people of the future could be far less developed than ourselves. In addition that 100K-1M years is a geologic time scale. There will be significant changes in the
That's not true. (Score:2)
The real problem came from Jimmy Carter's dropping of the plan to recycle and use spent nuclear fuels; the waste is only a few percent.
By reprocessing the used fuel rods, the waste, which is only a few percent, can be concentrated to a small volume of extremely radioactive stuff, and a large volume of Uranium and plutonium.
Carter didn't want to encourage other countries to reprocess their used fuel, and reclaim plutonium.
It didn't work; the US is the only nuclear country that doesn't reprocess their fuels,
$600B????? (Score:2)
Isn't that enough to encase the entire site in a hundred meters of concrete, and to dig a deep trench all around and fill that with concrete as well?
Are they trying to clean up to a safe level or a "below detection level"?????
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The concrete would last maybe 75 years and then you'll have 100x the amount of fatal radioactive waste to deal with.
Re: $600B????? (Score:1)
All the "nuclear is clean and safe and we can cheaply dispose of waste" people have conveniently vanished when $660B price tag shows up. Nuclear when viewed as mining to grave, is really hard and really expensive.
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Your apologies cure no cancers, apologist.
And your outrage causes no cancers either. Unless you live on the site, its unlikely anyone would ever be exposed to enough radiation to get sick. This is Pu, not fission products. The fact that you don't know the difference is a good example of why this project is fucked. Radiation and its health effects are a complex topic that experts still argue about. Often the evident contradicts the expert opinions. The good news is that people have lived in radiation levels far higher than around Hanford for c
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The Hanford facility was built in 1944. We knew almost nothing about the subject then. We do now, thanks mostly to the lessons learned from Hanford.
Yeah, and we've known how to produce superior power generation since long before electricity (in the case of wind turbines) and since the 1970s (in the case of PV solar) but we still dicked around with nuclear power so that a few rich pricks could get richer. "Too cheap to meter", my ass.
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Would you accept a "safe level", considering the government and the contractors have failed continuously since 1989? That's almost 30 years. And before that the government was lying about both the growing danger and the severity of the problem. The coverup continues to this day.
So move to Richland. You can tru
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Or for almost a trillion dollars, we could just relocate everyone away from the contamination... This government cleanup is a shitshow just like the government project to make nuclear weapons.
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Or for almost a trillion dollars, we could just relocate everyone away from the contamination
The contamination involves groundwater and will involve a river if we don't do anything. So you move everyone, and the contamination will just move too.
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Unfortunately, the sludge they are dealing with seems to eat through just about everything. There are so many different issues at the site that it is a hundred-year plan at best. I wish I understood the vitrification process better; it amazes me how complex it all is and that we are still likely decades away from being able to vitrify high-level waste, and the amount of additional waste the process will create.
Add in the plumes of contaminated water (which is several orders of magnitude easier to address),
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Capping it doesn't really work if it's leaking out the bottom into the ground water. High Radiation also tends to destroy concrete over time. Some of this stuff is hot enough that a worker even being within a certain distance of it is dangerous and above all it's not just radiation, these elements are all heavy metals that you can breathe in through dust and in some case even absorb through your skin. The biggest fear is things make it to the ground water as it would be undrinkable afterwards and most of th
The Columbia River supplies water to many farms. (Score:2)
A report [capitalpress.com] by Capital Express states, "For farmers such as Kagele, who depend on the Odessa aquifer, having access to Columbia River water is crucial. He estimates he has less than 15 years of water left in the five wells that he uses to irrigate his wheat, alfalfa, timothy hay, potatoes, sunflowers and canola. He hopes to receive Columbia River water to replace his wells within the next 10 years."
The Columbia River supplies water to many farms.
If nuclear waste enters the river, then the supply chain for food
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Are the politicians sufficiently smart to prevent a major disaster?
Perhaps an "Eat Fresh, eat local produce" campaign for washington state may provide increased motivation in DC?
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A report [capitalpress.com] by Capital Express states, "For farmers such as Kagele, who depend on the Odessa aquifer, having access to Columbia River water is crucial. He estimates he has less than 15 years of water left in the five wells that he uses to irrigate his wheat, alfalfa, timothy hay, potatoes, sunflowers and canola. He hopes to receive Columbia River water to replace his wells within the next 10 years."
Wait, they're strip-mining aquifers for water and are worried about whether they are entitled to replace it from elsewhere? Don't get me wrong, I don't think that's a good reason to burn a watershed, but this feels like a different story about sustainability.
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Perhaps the Russians should make a mini-series about Hanford as a reply.
Bureacracy owns this (Score:2)
Negotiations, permits, lawsuits etc. It just needs to get cleaned up. Shit, bureaucrats get too wrapped up in their pensions than actually doing their job and we don't need more red tape on cleaning this up. It's been 7 years people and there doesn't appear to be any planning and the Dept. of Energy needs to step up, get the funding aligned and execute. Sorry I don't really care if the locals (State of Washington et al.) have a say in this, just fix it. Adding more critical stakeholders to a problem just