The Columbia River
By Ron Beasley
This is the Columbia River a few miles from my home, cutting it's way through the Cascade mountain range via the Columbia River Gorge. While the Columbia is a big river it is not the biggest or the longest river in the world or the USA but it does hold one distinction. About one hundred miles upstream from here it becomes the most radio active river in the world as it flows by the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in south-central Washington operated by the United States government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works, Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and the Hanford Project. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, it was home to the B-Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world.[1] Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.
During the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five massive plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.[2][3] Nuclear technology developed rapidly during this period, and Hanford scientists produced many notable technological achievements. However, many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate. Government documents have since confirmed that Hanford's operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials to the air and to the Columbia River, which threatened the health of residents and ecosystems.[4]
The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the manufacturing process left behind 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m³) of high-level radioactive waste that remains at the site.[5] This represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[6] Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[7][8] and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.[2]
And about that "clean-up":
Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak
ONE of "the most contaminated places on Earth" will only get dirtier if the US government doesn't get its act together - clean-up plans are already 19 years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050.
More than 210 million litres of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million litres of waste into the ground.
There are now "serious questions about the tanks' long-term viability," says a Government Accountability Office report, which strongly criticises the US Department of Energy for delaying an $8 billion programme to empty the tanks and treat the waste. The DoE says the clean-up is "technically challenging" and argues that it is making progress in such a way as to protect human health and the environment.
The DoE's plan, however, is "faith-based", says Robert Alvarez, an authority on Hanford at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. "The risk of catastrophic tank failure will sharply increase as each year goes by," he says, "and one of the nation's largest rivers, the Columbia, will be in jeopardy."
And there are those who want to make even more of this nuclear toxic waste. If the ancient Egyptians had built a nuclear power plant stored the waste in one of the pyramids they would have gotten 30 or 40 years of electric power and we would still be guarding that pyramid today and would have to continue to do so for another 20,000 years. Just say no to nuclear power!
Nuclear waste can be safely stored and recycled when the political will exists. It's not a technical bottleneck.
Posted by: beebs | July 17, 2008 at 10:09 PM
When Barack Obama was asked his position on the Hanford Waste Site he admitted he'd never heard of the place or the issue.
I'm guessing Obama must be the first Presidential candidate in modern history who's never heard of the Hanford site and wasn't briefed on the current politics of the site by his staff.
When I heard Obama had never heard of Hanford and the Hanford nuclear issue, I was stunned.
It turned out Obama had even voted on the matter, an huge budget issue that comes before the Congress on a regular basis.
But he's never heard of the place.
Unbelievable.
Posted by: PrestoPundit | July 17, 2008 at 10:10 PM