Ambient office  = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 117 nanosieverts per hour

Beefsteak tomato from Central Market = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 110 nanosieverts per hour

       The Hanford Nuclear Reservation was established in 1943 in south central Washington State. The plutonium that was used in World War II to bomb Nagasaki, Japan was produced at the Reservation. During the Cold War, most of the plutonium for the sixty thousand nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal was produced at Hanford by the nine reactors and the five plutonium processing facilities constructed on the site.
       Nuclear weapons production at Hanford was halted in 1987. Fifty-three million gallons of high-level radioactive waste were left behind by these activities and remain at Hanford in underground tanks, some of which have been leaking.
       The high-level radioactive liquid waste at Hanford contains transuranic materials which are man-made unstable radioactive elements such as plutonium that are beyond the natural occurring elements in the periodic table. They will be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years.
       The Idaho National Laboratory in south east Idaho was established by the U.S. federal government in 1949 to be a center for nuclear research. Over the years, fifty experimental reactors have been constructed at the INL. Such research continues today with plans to construct one of the first commercial small modular reactors at the INL.
       There are more transuranic wastes at the INL than any other federal facility. This waste includes work clothing, rags, machine parts and tools that have been contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements. There have been court battles between the State of Idaho and the U.S. Department of Energy over the radioactive waste at the INL site. In 1995 an agreement was reached which required the DoE to clean up the INL site. The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) was constructed to deal with transuranic wastes.
       The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad New Mexico was opened in 1999 to receive solid transuranic waste from facilities around the U.S. which had been used for research and development of nuclear warheads. A few years ago, an accident closed the WIPP for several years, but it is now back in operation.
        The AMWTP at the INL was set up to compact and solidify transuranic wastes which could then be shipped to the WIPP for disposal. The AMWTP is just finishing up the processing of eighty-five thousand cubic yards of transuranic wastes for shipment to the WIPP. The DoE has just announced that the AMWTP will be closed next year.
       There have been proposals for keeping the AMWTP open to process liquid transuranic wastes from other national laboratories and other facilities used in the development of nuclear warheads with most of the waste coming from Hanford. A thirty-eight page economic analysis from the DoE was just released that said that “it does not appear to be cost effective due to packaging and transportation challenges in shipping waste” to Idaho.
      Currently, there are efforts to reclassify some of the high-level radioactive waste at Hanford to low-level radioactive waste. This would allow some of the waste currently stored in disintegrating underground tanks to remain in the tanks. The tanks would be topped off with grout and permanently buried. This might result in leakage of some wastes into the Columbia River. Unfortunately, the better solution of treatment at the INL and shipment to WIPP seems to be dead.

Ambient office  = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Carrot from Central Market = 78 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office  = 98 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Pineapple from Central Market = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 110 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 99 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office  = 9114 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 82 nanosieverts per hour

Crimini mushroom from Central Market = 118 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Dover sole – Caught in USA = 118 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
       Several bills attempting to allocate funds for spent nuclear fuel disposal have been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives but none of them has even made it to the U.S. Senate. Many members of the nuclear power industry say that the impasse over disposal of spent nuclear fuel has been impeded by political disagreements. The State of Nevada has vigorously opposed the Yucca Mountain repository because state officials say that it would be unsafe. They say that it would be vulnerable to possible volcanic activity, earthquakes, penetration by ground water, underground flooding and critical nuclear chain reactions.
        Nevada GOP Senator Dean Heller has been part of the strong opposition to the Yucca Mountain repository. Nevada Senator-elect Democrat Jacky Rosen who replaces Heller in 2019 has said that she would continue to oppose the Yucca Mountain repository.
        At the end of November of this year, Representative Dina Titus (D-Nev) sent the U.S. House of Representatives a letter asking them to reject any funding that could revive the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain repository that might be slipped into a final appropriations bill.
       In the past year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Energy and Water Development Appropriations, 2019. This bill included provisions for funding nuclear energy programs. The DoE had asked for one hundred and twenty million for the development of the Yucca Mountain repository and the bill included not only this request but added an extra one hundred billion dollars to the DoE budget.
       The U.S. Senate passed a bill that authorized the development of an interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility at a “voluntary site.” The Senate bill did not include any funding for work at Yucca Mountain. Ultimately, the bill that passed both the House and the Senate did not include additional funding for the Yucca Mountain site or the interim storage facility.
       The DoE recently sought public comment on the proper interpretation of the legal term, “high level radioactive waste.” In response to this DoE request for input, Representative Titus issued a statement that said, “This move to reinterpret the definition of high-level nuclear waste is nothing more than a backdoor Yucca Mountain. Current law does not allow this kind of waste to be shipped to the State for permanent disposal. If Donald Trump and the Republicans get their way, the flood gates for nuclear waste will be swung wide open, and the Nevada Test Site will be Destination #1.”
       While confusion reigns, the spent nuclear fuel keeps piling up at the reactor sites. If the overpacked cooling pools at commercial reactor sites are not relieved soon by having spent nuclear fuel rods moved to temporary storage, some reactors may have to be shut down. Unfortunately, there are serious problems with the design of the current generation of dry storage casks being used for temporary spent nuclear fuel storage. Recently, the dry casks being employed to store spent nuclear fuel from the closed San Onofre nuclear power plant near San Diego, California were all found to be defective and will have to be replaced. Perhaps, new solutions should be sought to the problem of the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel.
Yucca Mountain repository design: