I have dealt in depth with the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in previous posts. Since the U.S. nuclear program which started in the 1940s, a great deal of nuclear research and production have been carried out at Hanford. Many different types of nuclear waste with varying degrees of radioactivity have been buried at Hanford. Some of the containers are leaking and radioactive contamination is moving into the ground water. A great deal of money and time have been spent trying to clean up the mess at Hanford with little success and no end in sight.
In a previous post, I mentioned that some sort of radioactive sludge had been found between the shells of a double walled tank at Hanford. Contamination detectors and leak detector alarms indicated a problem at the tank over a year ago. Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), was paid nearly four hundred million dollars last year to managing the waste at Hanford. They said that there was no leak in the tank and that rainwater had gotten in to the space between the shells and set off the alarms. Only weeks after the first alarms went off, a technician was told to reset the alarms on the tank to a new zero setting so that the alarms would not be set off by the sludge. After repeatedly denying that there was a leak in the tank, the company has finally begun working on the possibility that there is a leak after all.
Why would the company managing the waste be reluctant to report a leak and deal with it? Bob Alvarez, a nuclear advisor for President Clinton, says that for decades there has been a culture of denial at Hanford where reporting problems has been frowned upon. Companies are given specific tasks and deadlines at Hanford and receive bonuses when those tasks are accomplished on time. If there are unexpected problems that may delay completion of tasks, then those bonuses may be endangered. Last year, WRPS received over twenty three million dollars in bonuses from the Department of Energy. Reporting and working on the leak in the double shelled tank might have increased costs and reduced bonuses. The economic incentive for the company working to cleaning up Hanford is biased in the direction of not reporting problems. It should be just the opposite.
The Columbia is one of the biggest rivers in the United States. It is used for irrigation, watering cattle, municipal water supplies, industry, etc. Some radioactive waste was just dumped in pits at Hanford decades ago and, working its way through the water table, wound up polluting the Columbia with cesium and other radioactive materials, as well as toxic metals and chemicals. To prevent more contamination of the Columbia, waste was stored in single walled tanks and buried. Some of the old single wall tanks began leaking radioactive sludge into the ground. They are working on putting the worst of the leaking wastes into the double walled tanks which are not suppose to leak. If there are leaks in the double walled tanks, that will be a major threat to the environment and a major cost to the State and the contractors. Gary Locke, an ex-Governor of Washington State, has said that Hanford is an “underground Chernobyl” just waiting to happen.
Drainage basin of the Columbia River from Kmusser.
