Up To 35,000 Gallons of Nuclear Waste Leak At Washington State Storage Site (rt.com) 135
An anonymous reader writes: Over the weekend, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste have leaked at a nuclear storage tank in Washington State. One worker called the leak "catastrophic." RT writes, "The Hanford Nuclear Reservation was originally constructed in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project." It produced plutonium for weapons, including the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The U.S. Department of Energy started removing what was left in the tank in March when workers discovered leaked waste had reached a depth of 8.4 inches. The Department of Energy calls the leak "anticipated," posing no threat to the public. Mike Geffre, the worker who discovered the leak, told King5 News, "This is catastrophic. This is probably the biggest event to ever happen in tank farm history. The double shell tanks were supposed to be the saviors of all saviors (to hold waste safely from people and the environment)." The double-wall storage tank AY-102 has been slowly leaking since 2011. It wasn't until March of this year that the U.S. Department of Energy began pumping the waste leftover in the tank.
Re: (Score:3)
Cold War Waste is a mess (Score:2)
Re:Cold War Waste is a mess (Score:5, Interesting)
I did a lot of service work in the 200 and 300 areas in Richland and at the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTR) at the Westinghouse-Hanford sites in the 80's and 90's.
One thing I learned was that the Hanford Patrol would go out weekly into the desert surrounding the 200/300 areas and shoot a few rabbits, which were then brought back for radiation testing. These were informally called "bunny hunts" and "RRT's" ("radioactive rabbit tests", lol).
It was (and still is) a viable way to find leaks of radioactive water from the storage tanks. The tank leaks, the water often pools in a gully or whatever, the rabbits drink the water, and the radioactive elements are easily detected in their blood and organs. If you start finding more than trace amounts then you've got a problem. They found problems more often than you might suspect.
Re: (Score:3)
Does it blend?
Re: (Score:2)
Does it blend?
Rabit? You bet it does!
Re: Cold War Waste is a mess (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not that great, but the advantage is that they cook themselves.
And they're real easy to hunt at night, what with the glow and all.
Re: (Score:2)
I did a lot of service work in the 200 and 300 areas in Richland and at the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTR) at the Westinghouse-Hanford sites in the 80's and 90's.
One thing I learned was that the Hanford Patrol would go out weekly into the desert surrounding the 200/300 areas and shoot a few rabbits, which were then brought back for radiation testing. These were informally called "bunny hunts" and "RRT's" ("radioactive rabbit tests", lol).
It was (and still is) a viable way to find leaks of radioactive water from the storage tanks. The tank leaks, the water often pools in a gully or whatever, the rabbits drink the water, and the radioactive elements are easily detected in their blood and organs. If you start finding more than trace amounts then you've got a problem. They found problems more often than you might suspect.
Well that'll never work. You'll never catch the mutated super rabbits.
Re: (Score:2)
Why couldn't they just capture them alive? Killing animals just to test their radioactivity strikes me as unnessecarily cruel.
It's hard to analyze a rabbit's liver and kidneys for built up radition while keeping the rabbit alive.
Re: (Score:3)
Rabbits breeds like.... rabbits. So population is not a issue.
Most likely there is other issues, such as laws against sedation darts being used non certified personnel. Or the personnel in question not being trained enough to set up traps for the intended period.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, but everything is radioactive too so there is that...
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad we didn't even try to manage it back in the day.
Words that should be engraved over every government building entrance.
Facts? (Score:3, Informative)
3500 gallons (not 35,000) of water than contained some nuclear salts (not uranium, or anything else normally referred to as nuclear waste). People who break into the restricted area should refrain from licking the ground for a few decades. Everyone else has nothing to worry about.
And it isn't surprising that a facility 70 years old, that can't get permission to rebuild, refurbish, or even empty because of ignorant Greenies, is falling apart. Maybe Greenpeace will allow the facility to build new holding tanks now, right?
Nah.
Re:Facts? (Score:5, Informative)
Some googling suggests that AY-102 is in fact high level waste, targeted for vitrification for ultimate disposal as HLV.
That said, this hype (which, by the way is what one would expect from the sources, a local news station and the Russian propaganda outlet RT) is totally unjustified. And then the Slashdot story makes it even worse, turning 3500 gallons into 35000 gallons.
It's 3000-3500 gallons, leaked from the interior tank into the exterior tank. That's it. It's a known issue that's been around for quite some time - not just since March. And the double hull is doing its job - catching the contents of the inner tank in the event of a leak.
They do need to get the stuff out of there - there is no third hull, and the outer hull doesn't have the air scrubbing of the inner hull. But that's underway.
Re: (Score:2)
And then the Slashdot story makes it even worse
The hell you say, I don't detect any spin at all in the summary. These two sentences totally aren't in conflict being right next to each other:
The Department of Energy calls the leak "anticipated," posing no threat to the public. Mike Geffre, the worker who discovered the leak, told King5 News, "This is catastrophic."
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How about if you add in the data point from the actual story.
"Fortunately, there has been no indication that waste has made its way into a leak detection pit outside of the tank itself, the Seattle Times reported."
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The inner tank is being drained, perhaps some of the fluid in the outer tank migrated to the now more empty inner tank?
Re:Facts? (Score:4, Informative)
I totally agree with your conclusion. But, just FYI, King 5 News is not "local". It is based in Seattle -- about 200 miles from Hanford, and a world apart in attitudes. For actual local coverage, see this story [tri-cityherald.com]. It has more details and less hype than I have seen elsewhere.
I guess what scares me (Score:5, Funny)
I'm also reminded of our response to Flint, MI's water crisis. Which is a big "meh". We can't even get a disaster fixed _after_ it happens. So I get nervous when I see a potential disaster that can (for some indeterminate amount of time) be ignored by a country with a long history of ignoring problems...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The green leftists are preventing any action by suing to stop work over and over.
Re: (Score:1)
Do you have a citation for this? Somehow I doubt it since there would be no reason for greenies to block building a new tank. It's okay, I get it, you hate environmentalists. A lot of them do block building new power plants but they certainly don't block maintenance.
Re: (Score:2)
The Columbia Nuclear Generating Station [wikipedia.org] would disagree with your assertion that Hanford does not also have a nuclear power plant at the site.
The Hanford Site began life as a plutonium production facility, but as time went on, the site has migrated from specifically being a weapons manufacturing facility to a DoE facility for all-things-nuclear. And, if Yucca Mountain could ever open, they could start cleaning the god damn place up a little.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly fear sells. From the story.
"Fortunately, there has been no indication that waste has made its way into a leak detection pit outside of the tank itself, the Seattle Times reported."
Re: (Score:1)
Not necessarily. The stuff is self-heating, it steams off on its own.
And more facts. (Score:5, Informative)
'None of the waste appears to have escaped from Tank AY 102 into the environment, the contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, said.'
The leak is between the inner liner and the outer liner, so actually ZERO has actually escaped.
So, unlikely the retarded mdsolar style summary, the double shell tank has done EXACTLY what it was designed to.
This is like complaining about a seatbelt and airbag doing its just after a minor accident where no one got hurt.
Of course we cannot let facts get in the way of our good healthy radiation terror! All those years of duck-and-cover
drills as the Reds rained nuclear death on our heads would have been wasted!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that really helps after 60 years of waste has already been made.
Why don't you go back to the 1940s and give General Leslie Groves your oh-so-insightful commentary and see how that works out.
Re: (Score:3)
The leak is between the inner liner and the outer liner, so actually ZERO has actually escaped.
Quote from the article: "But workers were trying Monday to determine why the waste that leaked between the tank walls rose by about 8 inches on Sunday and then dropped by half an inch."
Is it unreasonable to consider the possibility that the drop in 1/2 inch was the result of the outer tank leaking? I'm not saying it's true, but are we even allowed to suspect this without you calling us stupid? Possibiliti
Re: (Score:2)
The leak is between the inner liner and the outer liner, so actually ZERO has actually escaped. Quote from the article: "But workers were trying Monday to determine why the waste that leaked between the tank walls rose by about 8 inches on Sunday and then dropped by half an inch." Is it unreasonable to consider the possibility that the drop in 1/2 inch was the result of the outer tank leaking? I'm not saying it's true, but are we even allowed to suspect this without you calling us stupid? Possibilities may include evaporation (if that's possible for this material), a weird siphoning back into the inner tank (if that's possible), outer tank leakage, or numerous other things. The article did not rule out the possibility of the outer tank leaking.
More liberal chicken little alarmism. Liquid levels have been rising and dropping for millions of years. It's an artifact of measurement. It's Urban Radiation Islands. It's the sun, through tides. It's cheaper to adapt to the leak than fix it. Eliminating nuclear power to eliminate the leak will take us back to the stone age. Radioactive elements are not pollution, they are a normal part of the natural environment. An increase in radioactivity in the environment will enhance agricultural productivity by i
I guess what scares me (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You have to remember that Hanford doesn't exactly have a long history of trust with the local populous. From the 'downwinders [wikipedia.org]' of the 1950s and 60s, and the several TBq of radioactive material that was released into the Columbia River daily for several decades [wikipedia.org], there isn't exactly a whole lot of "well if you say so" left in the local populations.
Re:And more facts. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it wasn't. But they built it with an outer hull because - you're not gonna believe this... wait for it - failures like this happen. If every man-made piece of technology functioned exactly as it was designed, there would be no fucking need for a second hull.
The presence of the second hull is what's known, in engineering parlance, as a FAILSAFE. Which is to say - if the first container fails, due to corrosion, damage, sabotage, etc., then the second hull preserves the SAFETY of the design even though part of the design has FAILED.
No, it sounds like it's operating explicitly as designed. If the first hull operated "as designed" with a 100% success rate, then there would be no need for the second hull.
Right, because engineers typically design containers in such a way that, should the first layer of the container be breached, the materials the container are designed to hold will react violently and explosively in the most dangerous way possible with the materials used in the second layer.
I can't wait to read about your lithium-coated thermos bottles, and Dynamite-lined chimney flues.
Your post is nothing but fucking alarmist rubbish.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, because engineers typically design containers in such a way that, should the first layer of the container be breached, the materials the container are designed to hold will react violently and explosively in the most dangerous way possible with the materials used in the second layer.
If they were so smart that they designed this second hull to catch the stuff in the event that the first one leaked, then why is there a problem about built up gasses in that second hull. Didn't they think about the exhaust vents and stuff that exist within the main container not being in the void between them? I guess they aren't really that smart after all!
Re:And more facts. (Score:5, Insightful)
"But the inner tank was not designed to leak."
Of course it was, in a sense. All engineered systems have design lifetimes. The tank farms double-shells average around 30 years old. These tanks were not made to last "forever", unlike what the King-5 broadcast said.
It is a political failure, not a design failure. They were supposed to have been pumped dry many years ago. The permanent solution keeps getting postponed so we are stuck with various "temporary" solutions. This has been going on since before I came here after college (in 1979). We are making progress in cleaning things up, but it is very slow.
Yes I am an engineer. No I do not work at Hanford, but my friends and neighbors do.
Re: (Score:2)
It is a political failure, not a design failure.
No. Absolutely not. If your engineering does not take politics into account then you are an irresponsible engineer.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure the original engineering *did* take politics into account. You can't solve politics with engineering. The tanks are double-hulled so that, when the politicians fail to find a solution and the tanks start failing, the waste can be pumped into a new double-hulled tank and this can continue for as long as necessary until the politics are sorted out - in other words, forever. We already have engineering solutions to these problems.
"We already have engineering solutions to these problems." The words which made the former Soviet Union the ecological paradise it is today. Fun fact: most of the leaders of the Soviet Union were engineers, the way most of the leaders of the US have been lawyers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I know you know the saying that "there is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution."
So perhaps the only responsible thing to do is to refuse to participate in producing anything which is not workable as a long-term solution. It's irresponsible to participate in this farce.
It's not the engineer's job to force political action
It's part of their job to refuse to participate in a farce like the way we treat nuclear waste, just as it's irresponsible to create or sell a nuclear reactor to the USA given what they will do with it. It's illegal to sell a gun to someone you know will misuse it; what's the difference here?
Re: (Score:2)
You're being an ass. I know you know the saying that "there is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution." Dealing with this in a permanent manner was not feasible, and may still not be feasible. However long the tanks were designed to last, people were going to ignore them until they became a problem. There is a lot of radioactive shit that needs to be cleaned up there, and limited resources to do it with. It's not the engineer's job to force political action, and in point of fact that's damned hard to do with a fucking tank design. It's not like you can use politicians for structural supports.
In most jobs, anybody who says "that's not my job" is looking to get fired.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a permanent solution decided on in the 70s, built in the 80s and 90s, and then suspended / cancelled by everyone's favorite Senior Senator from Nevada after the >$90B was spent on construction jobs in his state.
But somehow people think that's the engineers' fault?
Re: (Score:2)
The first one wasn't Ok'd to leak.. The first one wasn't supposed to leak.
Kinda like the Shuttle O-rings that did not have a 60% safety margin when found partly burned through.. THEY WERE NOT SUPPOSED to BURN THROUGH in the first place.
Ok, so maybe the leakproof inner containers leaked. Big deal; at least we know the outer containers are leakproof!
Re: (Score:2)
People who break into the restricted area should refrain from licking the ground for a few decades.
FTFY: "People who break into the restricted area should refrain from licking the ground for a few hundred decades."
As part of my on-site training there in the 80s/90s, I was warned not to eat any of the succulents or other vegetation that grows on the Hanford reservation (although to be fair there's not a lot that flourishes there that's edible).
Re: (Score:2)
From TFA: "The problem occurred at the double-wall storage tank AY-102, which has actually been leaking since 2011. At the time, the leak was extremely small, and the waste would dry up almost right after spilling out between the inner and outer walls, leaving a salt-like substance behind."
So, unless you break into the site, then cut a door in the outer wall of the
Other source (Score:5, Informative)
A slightly less breathless account is at the Seattle Times:
http://www.seattletimes.com/se... [seattletimes.com]
Re:Other source (Score:5, Insightful)
A slightly less breathless account is at the Seattle Times:
http://www.seattletimes.com/se... [seattletimes.com]
A note to the poster of the original story, if you find yourself citing Russia Today as the primary source you should probably double check your facts.
Re: (Score:1)
Another source:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article... [ap.org]
Re: (Score:2)
A slightly less breathless account is at the Seattle Times: http://www.seattletimes.com/se... [seattletimes.com]
or bhttp://www.wmsym.org/archives/2014/papers/14178.pdf
Re: (Score:2)
A slightly less breathless account is at the Seattle Times: http://www.seattletimes.com/se... [seattletimes.com]
or bhttp://www.wmsym.org/archives/2014/papers/14178.pdf
supposed to be http://www.wmsym.org/archives/... [wmsym.org] obviously
Your Futurama quote for the day (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, the fools! If only they'd built it with 6,001 hulls! When will they learn?
-- Fry
mdsolar (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Leak? (Score:5, Informative)
It leaked out of the inner tank and was contained by the outer tank. As designed.
Catastrophic?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leak? (Score:4, Insightful)
In engineering space, a "catastrophic failure" is sometimes the terminology used to describe a single component failing.
Correct. It's a failure that may, but not always, lead to a more significant and more serious failure condition. You can, for example, have a "catastrophic failure" of an airplane landing gear tire but still be able to land the plane safely.
It's like when people say, "But evolution is just a theory!", not knowing that the word "theory" has a different meaning in a scientific context.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Leak? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) an alarm in the annulus sounded after the waste level rose to more than 8 inches deep. Several hours later the waste level in the annulus dropped by about half an inch.
If the waste is all contained in the outer hull, why did the water level in that hull go up and then down again?
2) Less than 100 gallons of waste was estimated to have leaked into the annulus in recent years, drying in three separate patches.
Wait... If it's sealed, how does it dry out?
In both of those events, the water had to go somewhere right? There are really only two options, it either went back into the main tank, or escaped containment. Since workers are lowering gauges & pumps into the outer hull space, it would imply that the outer hull is not pressurized. Applying some basic fluid dynamics, means the waste isn't going back into the main tank, and apparently isn't going into their containment pit either: Hanford workers found no waste outside the tank in a leak-detection pit in an initial check Sunday, Holloway said.
Re:Leak? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait... If it's sealed, how does it dry out?
My guess is that since the space between the outer and inner walls of the tank is quite large a small leak could mean that the water has evaporated and is part of the air in that space. If I make further assumptions that in this space the humidity is controlled with desiccants to prevent rust then the water is contained in those desiccant materials.
Re: (Score:2)
If the waste is all contained in the outer hull, why did the water level in that hull go up and then down again?
That's the wrong question. The question is why did the alarm annunciate and then clear without intervention. Your question writes off one of the most likely possibilities to explore when investigating the issue: instrument failure.
The instruments I trust the least are ones that operate on demand rather than continuously. It's very hard to calibrate, verify, or even identify if an instrument operating on demand is even working, and I have seen countless examples (admittedly not in the nuclear industry) of si
Never let the facts get in the way of a headline (Score:5, Informative)
Estimates place the leak between 3000 and 3500 gallons. They've been pumping out the tank, which held 800,000 gallons at one point, and 20,000 gallons are left in it. There are now about 8 inches that have leaked between the layers of the inner tank and outer tank, the vast majority since they started pumping.
So they stopped pumping, to figure out how to deal with that.
Re: (Score:1)
Attie the Atom says, (Score:1)
Clean, Safe and Too Cheap to Meter!
Re: (Score:3)
This waste is mostly from making nuclear weapons, not from nuclear power (they did produce electricity, but mostly as a side-effect). This place produced most of the USA's plutonium, and making weapons-grade plutonium isn't a tidy process.
Re: (Score:2)
Naturally. When you set off a bomb over Japan I'm sure it induced a TON of electrical current in their transmission lines.
Re: (Score:2)
Catastrophic ? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Catastrophic often means equipment failed. Catastrophic failure of a primary seal means stuff is getting out into the secondary seal. It's perfectly valid use of the term in engineering circles but doesn't mean the same thing that is implied in the media.
Did it just leak into the outer shell? (Score:2, Insightful)
From TFA:
Sources told KING the disturbance caused by the pumping must have exacerbated the leak: essentially blowing a hole in the aging tank allowing the material to leak more quickly into the outer shell... Tank AY-102 is one of 28 double-shell tanks at Hanford
If I'm reading this right, they have a double-shell tank and then inner shell is leaking material into the outer shell. That's not good, but it doesn't sound like the material has escaped from the tank. The outer shell is there as a failsafe, and it seems to be doing its job. Am I missing something?
PS. An RT.com article, really? A news source controlled by the Russian government has reason to exaggerate US failures.
Harry Reid (Score:1)
Harry Reid has been keeping the set aside, safe unified location for nuclear waste in Nevada from having any nuclear waste put in it. Now that he's retiring the new senator might be overridden and we can finally start sticking waste there.
Damn It (Score:2)
On a more serious note, WTF nuclear industry?! This is why we can't have nice things!
Re: (Score:1)
Lots of FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't a surprise as even the double shelled tanks are getting old, hence the plan to vitrify (glassify the waste).
Which is fairly expensive, and a waste of future nuclear fuel that we'll want to use when technology advances. A plan with no drawbacks?
Gallons ? (Score:1)
35000 gallons are equivalent to 132490 liters.
Can this be used in Molten Salt reactors? (Score:2, Interesting)
I just wonder if we can burn up some of these liquid wastes, rather than having them sit around making a mess.
Re: (Score:2)
The "there is no waste only fuel" people are cynical tricksters selling something.
Re: (Score:2)
Putting things in simpler terms for the misled (Score:2)
What is in this waste? (Score:1)
I've followed the efforts to renew the nuclear power industry for some time now and there are several people that claim to have nuclear reactor designs that can destroy nuclear waste from solid fuel nuclear power reactors. This waste is not from a reactor made to produce power but the reactors used for power and those to produce plutonium are quite similar.
If I understand the issue correctly it seems this waste is from the production of plutonium and contains some very nasty medium lived wastes. The short
Re: (Score:2)
Third parties and clueless fanboys are claiming a lot more than anyone who knows anything about these reactors are claiming. They get more out of spent fuel and expired weapon materials than other reactor designs. It's not remotely close to a solution to some other high level waste, most medium level waste or any low level waste.
So not an imaginary magic wand just another real thing in the toolbox.
No to RT (Score:1)
karma (Score:2)
Safe to carry in your pocket. Don't eat it (Score:3)
First , it's not "exaggerated in a way" - nothing leaked out of the tank. The story, as presented above,"is complete BS.
You talk about long-term, so I guess you're thinking of the plutonium 239 at the site. The radiation from U239 is stopped by skin, water, etc. So you can pretty safely carry it in your pocket. In fact, I DO carry a similar radioactive material in my pocket. It's not suggested that you eat U239, though. Much like bleach, toilet bowel cleaner, etc, eating it would be bad for you.
Pu, U (Score:2)
I was typing in a hurry. That should be Pu-239. Anyway, try to stay within your protective skin. Without your skin to protect you, plutonium can be dangerous. So don't eat it.
Re: (Score:2)
I was typing in a hurry. That should be Pu-239. Anyway, try to stay within your protective skin. Without your skin to protect you, plutonium can be dangerous. So don't eat it.
Right, it's not like anybody ever drinks water that comes out of the ground, right? Drinkable water comes in bottles or pipes, duh.
Re:Strong Proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the story was exaggerated in a way, and it should not have been. However, it still is a strong proof that existing nuclear plants are not safe.
You do know that this is not nuclear power related waste, which is pretty much limited to solid spent fuel rods, right? This is cold war waste from defense programs which didn't even bother to engineer any type of proper waste management. They had all sorts of nasty liquids that are much more problematic than spent fuel rods.
Re: (Score:1)
This is nasty shit left over from the US' nuclear bomb program, not civilian nuclear waste. It's completely different stuff; civilian nuclear plants don't produce this sort of waste.
Re: (Score:2)
This is nasty shit left over from the US' nuclear bomb program, not civilian nuclear waste. It's completely different stuff; civilian nuclear plants don't produce this sort of waste.
Because obviously military plutonium degrades to different elements than merely civilian plutonium. They even operate using completely different physics.
Plutonium was the PRODUCT here. (Score:2)
The amounts of Pu in the waste tanks should be relatively small, as most of it was extracted (the whole point of the Hanford site was to manufacture Pu, afterall, and they wouldn't willingly throw product out in the waste stream).
The waste tanks contain stuff that is far more radioactive than Pu, basically all the fission products (Cs-137, Sr-90, and other wonderful stuff), suspended in an alkaline (pH ~12) mixture of various salts and solvents. The stuff is quite hot both radioactively and thermally (due t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You shouldn't expect an unknown domain name to belong to a US site unless it ends in .us.
There will be someone at the door waiting to collect your geek card from you on your way out.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, the Hanford site isn't, like, close to the Columbia River or anything... Oh wait Well, at least the columbia river isn't used for agriculture... Ummm ok ok, nobody is drinking this shit are they... a yeah
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/nwp/faq.htm
#cantwaittellsombodysaysitisn'tabigdealcausethereisnowaytheleakagecangetintothecolumbia
The rightwing mantra: It's not a problem until there are bodies. And after there are bodies, the invisible hand of the market will ensure that it doesn't happen again.