Nuclear power is great except you can’t get rid of the nuclear waste. It is hazardous with a very long shelf life. It can be stored in containers and buried, but eventually they will leak.
You can put the containers and waste at a remote site. Where might be a good one? Deep in the mountainous woodlands of the pristine state of Washington sounds like a good idea. Let’s put the waste at Hanford Washington and call it a Nuclear Reservation.
Oh, by the way, there is a river next door. Don’t mind that because we are going to bury huge tanks filled with nuclear sludge deep below the earth. Forget about it.
This week, the head of the Department of Energy notified the Governor of Washington to inform him the several of the tanks are leaking at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons per year.
The governor assured that there is no immediate concern that the tanks will leak into the Columbia River water table that is right next door and just below the surface.
Check the maps in the slideshow as I wanted to see where that waste is headed.
"Governor: 6 tanks leaking radioactive waste at Washington nuclear site
By Greg Botelho, CNN
updated 9:36 PM EST, Fri February 22, 2013
The Hanford site in southeast Washington state once played a major part in U.S. plutonium production.
Last week, Washington's governor said 1 tank at the Hanford nuclear site was leaking
He now says 6 tanks are leaking radioactive waste, calling the news "disturbing"
The leaks pose "no immediate health risks," but do pose concerns, the governor says
Hanford site is home to one of the world's largest nuclear cleanup efforts(CNN) -- Six tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington state are leaking radioactive waste, the governor said Friday, calling the news "disturbing" even as he insisted there are "no immediate health risks."
"News of six leaking tanks at Hanford raises serious questions about integrity of all single tanks," Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday afternoon on Twitter.
Inslee said that he got the latest information about the site during a meeting in Washington with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
One week earlier, Chu called the governor to tell him that a single-shell tank in the same location was leaking liquids at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons per year. Believed to be the first to lose liquids since 2005, that tank was built in the 1940s and can hold roughly 447,000 gallons of sludge, according to the governor's office.
"(Chu) told me today that his department did not adequately analyze data it had that would have shown the other tanks that are leaking," Inslee said.
The sprawling, 586-square mile Hanford site houses a total of 177 underground tanks full of radioactive sludge, of which 149 are single-shell tanks.
On Friday, Inslee said there is "still no current health risk" tied to the leaks.
He made similar comments a week earlier, saying "it would be quite some time before these leaks could breach groundwater or the Columbia River." At the same time, the governor stressed that the problem must be addressed."This certainly raises serious questions about the integrity of all 149 single-shell tanks with radioactive liquid and sludge at Hanford," he said Friday."
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/22/us/washington-nuclear/index.html
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