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Suddenly No Solution For 56 Million Gallons Of Highly Radioactive Toxic Waste Leaking Into The Ground
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Engineers around the world have done a great job developing nuclear technologies to serve mankind’s many endeavors: medical devices, power generators, naval propulsion systems, or the most formidable weapons ever built, so formidable that they could largely wipe out mankind and its many endeavors.
However, engineers haven’t figured out yet what to do with the highly radioactive and toxic materials nuclear technologies leave behind. They leak through corroded containers, contaminate soil, water, and air, and after decades, we try to deal with them somehow, but mainly we’re shuffling that problem to the next generation. The enormous sums coming due over time were never included in the original costs. We’re not even talking about an accident, like Fukushima, whose costs will likely reach $1 trillion, but about maintenance and cleanup.
For example, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, the largest, most daunting environmental cleanup project in the US. More than 11,000 people work on it. Nine relatively small reactors on that property produced plutonium, starting in 1943 through the Cold War. In 1987, the last reactor was shut down. What remains are various structures, such as the evocatively named “Plutonium Finishing Plant” (aerial photo: red “X” marks denote sections to be demolished) or the “Plutonium Vault Complex” that stored plutonium for nuclear weapons (photo of corridor).
Buried underground are 177 tanks containing 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and toxic waste. The 31 oldest tanks, made of a single layer of now rust-perforated carbon steel, have been leaking highly radioactive and toxic sludge into the ground for decades.
Hence the “Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant,” a radiochemical processing facility. In its annual report to Congress, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which has jurisdiction over the “defense nuclear facilities” of the Department of Energy (DOE), describes the task at Hanford:
After these wastes are retrieved from the tanks, the plant will chemically separate the waste into two streams of differing radioactive hazard and solidify them into glass in stainless steel canisters. The low-radioactivity glass will be disposed of onsite, while the high-level waste glass will be shipped offsite for permanent disposal once a repository is available.
Turns out, almost none of it, according to the report, can be done safely or at all. And that “repository?” It doesn’t exist. Despite decades of trying, the US has not been able to come up with one.
In 1989, the DOE inked a Tri-Party Agreement with the EPA and Washington State to clean up the site. It would require the construction of a special facility. In 1990, the DOE paid for two sets of plans. Then nothing. People got promoted out of there, did things, or retired. A decade passed. In 2001, construction finally began.
Another decade passed. In 2010, with technical challenges galore, a guy named Walter Tamosaitis, a former engineering manager at the site, sent the Board a letter, claiming that he “was removed from the project because he identified technical issues that could affect safety.” An investigation followed. Later, the Board conceded that Hanford had “a flawed safety culture” that was hindering “the identification and resolution of technical and safety issues.”
By that time, with the plant far from finished, the price tag had ballooned to $12.2 billion. The design and construction contractor, Bechtel National, a unit of the Bechtel Corporation, was getting rich off this project and wouldn’t mind if it dragged on forever. CEOs come and go, but the project’s reliable revenue stream would always be there.
Now, almost 25 years after the original agreement, the price has ballooned further, but the DOE no longer has an estimate, nor does it have any idea as to when the plant will be finished. If ever. Because it has some, let’s say, issues. As the report in bland bureaucratese points out: “Although this is a one-of-a-kind project with novel technology that requires significant research and development, it is being designed concurrent with construction. As a result....”
As a result of starting to build the dang thing before they solved the major technical problems, they now have a mess on their hands; and pending a solution to “the remaining technical issues,” explained DOE spokeswoman, Aoife McCarthy, construction has now stopped.
The Board raised “a serious question as to whether this plant is going to work at all,” said Senate Energy Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. The report lists design problems that could lead to mechanical breakdowns, chemical explosions, and nuclear reactions.
But leaving the highly radioactive and toxic sludge in the underground tanks would be dangerous as well. The older single-shell tanks are leaking. And as the report explains, many of the “double-shell tanks currently have enough flammable gas retained in the waste that, if released in the tank headspace, could create a flammable atmosphere.” And blow up.
“These are the questions that should have been resolved at the front end,” groaned Senator Wyden.
Precisely the quandary not just of Hanford but of the entire nuclear age! We’ve figured out the first part. But we haven’t figured out how to deal with the second part, radioactive waste. Entire careers have been and will be made at Hanford in decommissioning the site and removing its structures, reactors, and contaminated materials. Many more careers will be made dealing with the highly radioactive and toxic sludge. It will eat up fortunes for generations.
Catastrophic nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl or Fukushima, are very rare, we’re told incessantly. But when they occur, they’re costly. So costly that the French government, when it came up with estimates, kept them secret. But the report was leaked. Read.... Potential Cost Of A Nuclear Accident? So High It’s A Secret!
And here is my review of David Stockman’s latest book, an awesome romp through the economic, financial, and monetary shenanigans of our times! Read.... David Stockman: “Money Printers And Wall Street Coddlers”
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Karl Denniger assured me a long time ago that Fukishima was contained, and reminded me in his friendly way not to be a nervous Nellie.
Tepco has emergency press conference about new highly radioactive leak at Fukushima ...
NYT: Rat Chase Again Bedevils Fukushima Nuclear Plant — Power lost to spent fuel pool for hours
Alarm triggered at Fukushima Daiichi — Workers ordered to put on full face masks
Thanks for keeping us up-to-date with these articles.
It's obviously an important topic and I haven't seen it mentioned much in the MSM and certainly not in the depth you've provided.
Must be bad if they're calling for a press conference.
They usually don't say shit.
"Can't see it, can't taste it, can't smell it...don't talk about it!" Tepco Operations Manual (page 1).
You go bro. THIS!!!...is a high priority
http://asiancorrespondent.com/53036/the-fukushima-death-toll/
Oh, and here's a source you might believe:
http://science.time.com/2013/03/01/meltdown-despite-the-fear-the-health-risks-from-the-fukushima-accident-are-minimal/
Irrelevant on a cosmic timeframe and point of view... get along, folks; the markets want you to be bulish.
On a cosmic time frame we're all toast. read the header dude.
Yes, nothing wrong with the economy, either... and you believe that? LOL believe what you must, "dude"...
"There has got to be a God; the world could not have become so fucked up by chance alone." --Edward Abbey
Send the stuff to Iran. I am sure they could use it.
Send it to the moon - ala SPACE 1999.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WZW4groJro
Feed it to Godzilla - he'll call it a delish and be forever grateful!
NO!!!! With nothing to stop it, that radiation will travel LIGHT YEARS!!!!!
So, Germany wants all their gold back and is dismantling their whole nuclear industry and going green and the U.S., Japan and others are staying the nuclear course to be what? Of course,competitive. Just to do anything for a godamn buck. And that's what it's all come down to,fiat junk paper currency.
Obviously the Germans did the math on the costs of dismantling it and replacing with "alternative" fuels sources, and are planning ahead for it with the repatriation...
LOL Like we care about the future.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.....*sigh
Poverty is the worst polluter.
the marianas trench subduction zone
We couldn't build a better place for a 100 Trillion dollars to dump our nuclear waste.
I wonder how viable the new "Prism Reactors" or similar designs might be in safely disposing of nuclear waste?
From an article by Felix Salmon:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/144888-nuclear-power-going-fast
"...a PRISM reactor — a fourth-generation nuclear power station which runs on the nuclear waste generated by all the previous generations of nuclear power stations.
PRISM is GE’s (GE) name for an integral fast reactor, or IFR, and it’s a pretty great technology. The amount of fuel which already exists for such reactors would be enough to power the world for millennia — no new mining needed. Fast reactors also solve at a stroke the problem of what to do with the vast amounts of nuclear waste which are being stockpiled unhappily around the world. They’re super-safe: if they fail they just stop working, they don’t melt down. And they can even literally replace coal power stations: ..."
--
Thorium reactors wouldn't help dispose of our current nuclear waste, but would allegedly be FAR safer and produce short-lived nuclear waste. An excerpt:
http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/79398/kirk-sorensen-detailed-exploration-thoriums-potential-energy-source
Compared to Uranium-238-based nuclear reactors currently in use today, a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LTFR) would be:
Most of the know-how and technology to build and maintain LFTR reactors exists today. If made a priority, the U.S. could have its first fully-operational LFTR plant running at commercial scale in under a decade.
Dear ALL PEOPLE east of Hanford and Richland, WA,
YOU ARE ALL DYING AND DO NOT KNOW IT!!!
Please, please get this information to all those who live up in that region.
This morning, listening to AJ, he made some mention about people moving up to the Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming, and the Dakotas region. The thought came in listening to this, gawd, do these people know how awfully radioactive bad that entire area is? Do they know how much radiation is spewing out every day into that whole part of the country? All one has to do is look at the people, check death stats, and test the grounds, waters, and air to know that the radiation is killing off everything in a biological form up there. It will continue to do so, because it is a part of the population reduction agenda. Just like fukushima is. Wait until all the reactors shut down never to be started again after an EMP, which will be the death knell for the USA population, as well as everything in Europe that is east of the USA. There is NO escape from the poisonous radiation that is permeating and adding up in everything on the planet.
NOW HEAR THIS! There is no escape from this evil. NO ONE will escape the radiation that is coming down on the world now. All this and now we are seeing and hearing the banter of fear around the possibility of nuklear weapons being used by the puppets in no korea, and china. Any ding-a-ling with half a noodle to think with can easily see where all this is going. Everybody knows the babylonian govt puppets are playing the depopulation game for the rottenchilds empire of dust. Everybody on the planet IS being effected by not only the radioactive fallout from Hanford, and Richland, but also from fukushima. There are prolly more sites that are leaking radiation that are not even being talked about, or exposed.
Here are some graphs that were liberally kyped from the EPA site just after the nuklear explosions at fukushima before they took them down. Most of the proof that these places are leaking incredible amounts of radiation has been long covered up. If it were not for fukushima, we never would have made this discovery. Just as it is today, the clean up efforts are not clean up efforts at all, they are fat-kat get rich schemes at best. The Bechtel criminals are going to continue to steal American tax payer money while not producing any efforts until the human race has been killed off. The USA people are paying the epa to cover up this information, which is equal to the people paying for their own slows deaths. Check these out, copy them and use this info to prove that the Hanford and Richland disaster areas are ongoing evil killing events.
Richland, WA:
http://imageshack.us/a/img811/6055/graphrichlandwa.jpg
Billings, MT:
http://imageshack.us/a/img59/6610/billings.jpg
Rapid City, SD:
http://imageshack.us/a/img811/8273/rapidcitybeta.jpg
Denver, CO:
http://imageshack.us/a/img843/3728/graphden.jpg
Las Vegas, NV:
http://imageshack.us/a/img195/3525/graphlv.jpg
If you know anyone up in that region, tell them to move way south. It seems that the southern regions west of Texas are the only relatively safer areas to be. Hotter than heck there, but sorta safe. In all actuality, there is NO SAFE PLACE to be in the entire country. And as for Texas, oh boy, you do not want to know how bad Texas is. It too is the victim of lots of fallout, and way to high radiation readings. Again, all one needs do is to study the death stats to know how bad this stuff is. Here is just one of the graphs from Texas. It is as bad there, as it is up in the areas east of Hanford and Richland, WA.
http://imageshack.us/a/img842/8928/sanangelobeta.jpg
So, what to do?
Protect yourself as much as possible. Be aware of what is radioactive around you, and when the jet stream is above you. Take preventative measures and learn the protocols of radiation protection. Good ol GW posted some great methods to protect the body some while back. Maybe we can get a repeat of what people can do to protect themselves.
Long story short, please make all the people east of these horrible places of radioactive death aware of what is happening, and pray for these people that live near these places that wil have shortened life spans, and suffer the consequences of this evil.
Is this the future of the world? Hedge your bets, lay up your treasures where they count the most well.
On the Beach-Part One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxvx9gQ8k0
On the Beach-Part Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn7JAE5D39o
Prolly one of the most profound and moving movie pictures ever made. One more time for the gipper!
Don't miss the lead-up to 'On The Beach', 'The Road':
"A father (Viggo Mortensen) and son make their way across a post-apocalyptic United States in hopes of finding civilization amongst the nomadic cannibal tribes"
Clips:
http://the-road--trailer.blogspot.com/
What was interesting is that they never actually showed or indicated in the movie "The Road" what was the precursor to the events on the road. It was a real possible depiction of the after-aftermath of the first waves of insanity and starvation after the excrement hits the rotating device. The fukushima events, or any kind of nuklear war could have been what was the lead-up. It looked like post apocalyptic scenes of the beach say, after all the reactors melted down from a emp, or something solar even.
the road most boring book every written
Wooooh Jah,
-zero hedge on fukushema for humanity, not counting black swans.
-hanford and fukushema could become run away events, in short order, if this accrues, war is soon come, in hours, of sight abandonment!
Bless'ed Love...let it guide you always Mon!
Just amber the stuff.
What's DC Comics take on it - who's the designated superhero on these issues?
Here's the real problem as I see it. Now that the global society has become weened and addicted on the tit of nuclear energy, ( jobs, abundant ekectricty etc) it will virtually impossible to cut our selves off the nuclear "drug". We will only make more plants. Even in the face of fuku, we are not fazed for long.
If we STOPPED more production NOW of the poison nuke plants, then slowly transitioned to greener systems ( yes brown outs and all) we could reverse the death of our planet and heal. Mothball the old ones one by one. The longer we are addicted to it the harder it's going to be to ever be cut off from it. Right now we are utterly dependent on them for survival. This will only get worse as the decades come.
Our whole society needs to return to a cleaner, safer more sustainable course of living or we are truly going to make HELL ON EARTH for our children and grand children. If that means brown outs, car pooling and spots on my apples SO BE IT.
The earth of the future is going to be a toxic, cancer ridden, disgusting lifeless pile of rock.
We can create a new realality if we want to.
"Note that the lethality of radioactive reactor cores goes up the first 250,000 years they are out of the reactor – not down."
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/28/fukushima-how-many-chernobyls-is...
Speaking of cancer:
"Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.
Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/03/cancer-clinics-are-turning-away-thousands-of-medicare-patients-blame-the-sequester/
I'll go out on a limb, and say that, although the article mentions Medicare, the cancer clinics are probably also turning away Medicaid patients – anyone who is on Federal public health insurance.
Interesting that this is all timed to hit just before the waves of thyroid cancers are about to hit the US – which is just the beginning of all the Fuku cancers that will afflict the population of this country.
Is the US getting ready to refuse to treat the tens of thousands of children that will require chemotherapy treatment, when their parents are out of work and can't afford an insurance plan that will cover what is required?
50 million people are uninsured, not including their children:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/census_bureau_health_insurance/
43 million people were enrolled in Medicare in 2006, 36 million of whom were 65 and older.
http://www.kaiseredu.org/tutorials/Medicare101_2006/player.html
53 million people were enrolled in Medicaid.
http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/7306%20Ten%20Myths%20about%20Medicaid_Final-3.pdf
Say, roughly 75-85 million people, another 35-45 million children, so on the back of a napkin, 110-130 million people ineligible for cancer treatment.
What other diseases caused by radiation will the majority of us not be eligible for treatment?
You know the 'elite' will get their children taken care of. Just probably not yours, because when the time comes, the government will find a way to not pay for it.
The 'Death Panels' are beginning to kill us off right now. Now, and tomorrow.
From Enenews.com.
By definition half life and radioactivity are inversely proportional.
If it's been sitting around for 20 years, it's not highly radioactive.
Read up on how they wanted to classify airline pilots as radiation workers before you take your next trip to europe.
'Fukushima?: Hundreds Of Flight Attendants Fall Ill With Hair Falling Out'
"Following wild-life dies offs and polar bears losing their fur hundreds of Alaska Airline attendants complain of mysteriously illness with symptoms including itchy rashes and hair falling out.
It is just making news now but since last year Alaskan Airplane flight attendants started mysteriously getting ill with symptoms that include itchy rashes and hair falling out of their heads.
The official story is “toxic uniforms” are to blame, but as I previously reported wild life in Alaska is also suffering from mysterious die-offs with polar bears losing their fur and skin lesions and many"
'Fukushima to Blame For Mysterious Illness Striking Hundreds of Flight Attendants?'http://www.infowars.com/mysterious-illness-strikes-hundreds-of-flight-at...
You might have been able to get me with the story of increased thyroid problems in infants on the west coast. Because the thyroid concentrates iodine. But only airline attendants and only on Alaska Airlines? Are you serious? But that still doesn't change the fact that anything radioactive that will be around for a MILLION years could just as well be called C14.
In probably well under 200 years, those radioactive materials can be used in used as power sources in more well designed and sane reactors.
One other partial solution to radioactive waste is to cast it within glass blocks and dump it into some super deep ocean trench where it will be subducted.
Casting it into glass blocks is the vitrification process they're trying to figure out at Hanford. So far, after billions of dollars, thay can't get it to work.
Many things look good on paper, especially when the company with the paper is a large campaign contributor. It doesn't mean it will work.
'Radiation cover-up: Fox pulls Fukushima-radiated Pennsylvania baby death rise 48% story'
http://www.examiner.com/article/radiation-cover-up-fox-pulls-mangano-rad...
'Is the 35% Increase in Baby Deaths in the PNW a Result of Fukushima Fallout?'
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/06/10/is-the-increase-in-baby-deaths-in...
“A baby that has no head is a baby that has no head.” - a different approach to the question of radiation and birth deformities, How do you find out if low levels of ionising radiation cause birth defects and genetic abnormalities? by Noel Wauchope, 23/10/12
http://noelwauchope.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/a-baby-that-has-no-head-is-...
bald is beautiful ..
"The enormous sums coming due over time were never included in the original costs. We’re not even talking about an accident, like Fukushima, whose costs will likely reach $1 trillion, but about maintenance and cleanup."
That is going to turn out to be a very conservative estimate.
What's another trillion dumped on the shoulders of future generations? We add approximately that much to the official debt load every year. But that's okay, because, as Nancy says, we're "doing it for the children".
Barf.
Bring it on. if my balls glow in the dark, the wife can home in for a midnight hummer lots easier.
Was all the rage about a century ago with not so great or reawarding results...
This is the bottom line. You can clean up Hanford quickly and for a few billion. Vitrification into sealed bars of copper or stainless will take care of it. Or you can study the situation forever at taxpayer expense gaining big fat paying contracts and jobs for Washington, consultants, and big business. Take your choice.
It seems that Vitrification was a big lie perpetrated by the french nuke industry, as is the storage and filtration at fukushima of radioactive water, but hey someone will pay.
How do say plutonium in french?
Isn't it pretty obvious they have already made a that "choice."
The population reduction agenda will march on no matter what.
The Japanese have a much more immediate problem and they are well known for ingeneuity. Sit tight and hire them once the development costs have been amortized.
humanity, technology, black mold, machines, rinse & repeat, for eternity, woooh jah
They'll all be dead before any solution is 'discovered'. Kyle knows, he just can't talk about it. Soros, too. Shorting Japan is shooting radioactive fish in a barrel.
"The death rate of elderly people evacuated from old people’s facilities around the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant has tripled, according to research. The University of Tokyo tracked 328 senior evacuees and found 75 had died within one year, close to three times the annual average death rate."
A 300% increase, and climbing forever.
http://www.euronews.com/2013/03/28/fukushima-a-legacy-of-unforeseen-heal...