Lesley Stahl has a story up on the 60 minutes website that aired this past Sunday evening. Its about Hanford WA. home to the largest piece of radioactive real estate this side of Russia, 586 square miles. There the government stores its radioactive waste..waste that is as old as original Nagasaki bomb waste. Say it again..original Nagasaki radioactive bomb waste. From THAT bomb..you know the one..it helped end WWII. Hanford is located along the Columbia River.
Try this on for size: "There are 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored in underground tanks that are now so old they have leaked one million gallons of the stuff."
Thats a sobering statistic. Its not denied by the government or any other entity.
Now that you have absorbed that stat..let me give you another one..The waste has leaked into the groundwater. It's heading for the Colombia River. Over a million human beings live downstream of the Columbia River.
The government has grandiose plans for dealing with this toxic nightmare that has been around now for decades upon decades and growing. They been working on it for years..and years..and years..and I think you get my drift. 60 Minutes has been following the saga of the nuclear waste at Hanford for 16 years. Its only gotten worse.
The acronym FUBAR comes to mind. The plan was to move the waste into better built containers and then make glass logs out of it. Not a bad idea..if it works. They don't really know if it will work..they won't be able to try it out until the year....ready for this number?? The year 2018. Thats not all..the cost over runs,construction delays and the fact that the tanks weren't built to the correct specs really makes you feel warm and fuzzy don't they? Bechtel is a wonderful company..even if they did screw up the build of the tanks...AND get a very hefty $15 Million dollar bonus for building the faulty and bascially useless tanks. Lets reward mediocrity!!!!! Its the American Way..right? The boondoggles on this project just blow your mind. The promises to correct and move forward are treasonous lies and bullshit in my humble opinion. I haven't even told you about the other screwups and lies and coverups..you need to read the writeup. I can't bring myself to type them all out.
Leslie Stahl interviewed some of those lovely folks over at the Department of Energy for this latest twist in the ongoing soap opera that is Hanford's nuclear waste problem. Its everyone's problem, isn't it? Of course I thank God that I do not live in that part of the United States. The government will have us all beleive they are doing the best they can. The governor of the state of WA, Christine Gregoire doesn't believe the bullshit for one minute. Her quote from the article is sobering: "Let me tell you the story. 1989: They told me there was zero chance that there would be any leakage and ground water contamination. Sixteen years later, we have confirmed 67 leakers, groundwater contamination. I told them then, 'Gravity works like this.' And I’ll tell them again today: gravity means we are very vulnerable to the groundwater contamination and a plume that we now have moving towards the Columbia River, which is the lifeline of our Pacific Northwest,"
The final rub is this....the federal government wants to CUT the budget for the Hanford clean-up. They basically want to "walk away" from this mess they created that can become a huge ,catastrophic disaster of mythic proportions at any given time for the residents of WA state that reside along the Columbia River.
Tell me again how safe this shit is... If we can't figure what to do with the millions of gallons of radioactive waste we already have..how can we call it a "safe, alternative energy source" with a straight face? We still don't know how to deal with the left-overs sportsfans. The Nuclear Energy Institute can pay the former founder of Greenpeace and a former head of the EPA to talk up this crap up about "safe" nuclear power till the next millenium..I don't care..I will never back nuclear energy until they figure out the disposal of it and show that it works. For me, signing off on nuclear power at this stage is tantamount to telling the residents along the Columbia River..we will get back to you on the Hanford site, but just sign off on this energy source..okey dokey?
Unless of course you don't mind waiting 10,000 years to use the Columbia River when the "plume" of radioactive waste thats heading for it gets there. Don't hand me the mumbo jumbo about nuclear plant waste being "less" toxic than the stuff at Hanford. It's not the point. My point is its all toxic and deadly..and there is NO plan to deal with any of it that works. Thats the operative phase..No plan that has been shown to work. The priority should be to deal with the radioactive waste first. Not building more nuclear reactors and worrying about the waste later..thats called closing the barn door after the horse has run away.
