Recently I blogged about the conflict between the State of Washington and the Federal Government with respect to the cleanup of the horribly polluted Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Decades of development and manufacture of U.S. nuclear weapons at the Reservation have left behind a variety of radioactive contamination.
There are one hundred and forty seven buried single-wall tanks at Hanford built between 1943 and 1964 to contain mainly liquid waste. Unfortunately, there was far too much such waste for the tanks and some was poured directly into unlined trenches to soak into the ground. Sixty seven of these tanks have leaked some of their contents into the ground. Twenty eight double-walled tanks were constructed to take waste from single-walled tanks with the promise that they would not leak.
One such double-walled tank known AY-102 has been leaking for two years and there are six more of similar design which might leak in the future. Washington State law requires that the operators of Hanford to pump out any leaking tank within twenty four hours of the discovery of the leak. The State has been considering legal action against the Federal Government over the failure to empty the leaking tank.
The first legal action occurred on Friday, March 21st. The Washington State Department of Ecology demanded that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) provide a faster time table for emptying AY-102. The U.S. DoE had said that it might take more than two years to get the tank pumped out. Washington State is now demanding that the U.S. DoE begin pumping out the waste in AV-102 by September 1st, 2014. The removal of solid waste in the tank must commence by December 1st, 2015. The tank must be completely empty by December 1st, 2016. The U.S. DoE has responded with a complaint that the State action was announced with no prior notification of the U.S. They say that there may be problems pumping out the tank in the near future and that it does not currently pose a threat to the public. The second legal action happened this week as Washington State informed the U.S. Justice Department that the U.S. DoE is in violation of a 2010 consent decree that applies to the cleanup of Hanford.
A few days prior to the first legal action, the Governor of Washington State, Jay Inslee met with the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz to consider the Federal Government's plan for resuming work on the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant (WTP). This thirteen billion dollar project in intended to mix some of the most dangerous radioactive waste with sand and heat the mixture to create glass logs that can be safely placed in long-term permanent storage whenever a national nuclear waste repository is created. After years of work and billions of dollars, construction of the WTP was halted because of design concerns. The complexity of the mixtures held in the tanks was found to cause potentially catastrophic vibrations in the plant piping under the original design. There was also the danger of generation of hydrogen gas which could have exploded and released radioactive materials into the atmosphere threatening the nearby Tri-Cities. The U.S. DoE had promised to have the WTP up and running by 2022 but has said that it cannot meet that deadline.
Perhaps the Federal Government can divert funds recently requested for work on the U.S. nuclear arsenal to cleaning up the mess they left from previous nuclear weapons manufacture at Hanford.
Design of AY-102 double-walled tank at Hanford:
