[ RadSafe ] 60 Minutes feature on Hanford last night

[John Jacobus]

You really have to read beyond this first page to
appreciate the fine work of DOE.

--- "Muckerheide, James" <jimm at WPI.EDU> wrote:

> Sandy et al.,
> 
> See below: "Lethal and Leaking"
> 
> Regards, Jim Muckerheide
> ====================
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
> Behalf Of
> > Sandy Perle
> > Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 2:21 PM
> > To: radsafe at radlab.nl
> > Subject: [ RadSafe ] 60 Minutes feature on Hanford
> last night
> > 
> > This was a scathing report on DOE and the Hanford
> clean-up process. I
> > know how 60 Minutes can skew information and
> manipulate the final
> > product. However, there were DOE Management,
> Washington State
> > Governor and others interviewed.
> > 
> > Haven't seen this mentioned on Radsafe, so, what
> is the take from our
> > Hanford colleagues regarding the telecast?
> > 
> > -------------------------------------
> > Sandy Perle
> 
> 
> Lethal And Leaking
> 
> April 30, 2006
> CBS News
> Produced By Rich Bonin
> 
>
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1553896.shtml
> 
> Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the
> same thing over and over
> again and expecting different results. Well, that's
> what critics accuse the
> U.S. Department of Energy of: making the same
> mistakes over and over in a
> project that has already squandered billions of
> dollars in taxpayers' money.
> But the risk here is far greater than financial,
> since it involves highly
> toxic nuclear waste.
> 
> At stake are millions of gallons of radioactive
> liquid waste left over from
> the making of nuclear bombs, including the one that
> was dropped on Nagasaki.
> This waste has been sitting in underground tanks in
> Hanford, Wash., ever
> since, while the government tries to figure out how
> to clean it up. As
> correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, the waste is so
> lethal that a small cup
> of it would kill everyone in a crowded restaurant,
> in minutes.
> 
> 
> 60 Minutes recently visited Hanford, where the
> witches' brew is being stored.
> Hanford, located along the Columbia River, is home
> to the most contaminated
> piece of real estate in the world outside of Russia.
> 
> It is contaminated by waste left over from the
> production of nuclear weapons.
> 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.
> 
> Some of it leaked into the groundwater, and it's
> heading right for the river.
> With a million people downstream, there's a sense of
> urgency about cleaning
> up the site, which is huge. It takes up 586 square
> miles in southeastern
> Washington.
> 
> But for the Energy Department, which runs the
> project, it's been a case of
> easier said than done. In the nearly 16 years 60
> Minutes has been covering
> this story, it's been one foul up after the next.
> 
> Charles Anderson, the Energy Department's official
> overseeing nuclear clean
> up, gave Stahl a tour of what has been built so far
> at Hanford, starting with
> a replica of the underground tanks.
> 
> "This is a model of tanks that are already built
> that have waste in them. Be
> careful with your head here as we go in," Anderson
> told Stahl during the
> tour.
> 
> The tank can hold 750,000 gallons of waste. Many of
> the tanks, built for the
> Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear
> weapons, are more than 60
> years old.
> 
> Anderson explains there are a total of 177 tanks
> holding "high-level" waste
> at this site.
> 
> The plan is to pump the waste out of the tanks and
> route it through miles of
> pipes to a yet-to-be-completed pre-treatment
> facility. The idea is to convert
> the radioactive waste into glass logs.
> 
> "This is where the radioactive waste will come from
> the tank farms, will come
> from those tanks and will come in here and be
> treated in different chemical
> processes and be turned into glass logs for final
> disposition to be disposed
> of in a landfill," Anderson explains.
> 
> Stahl last visited the area in 2001, when the site
> was just a field. Anderson
> says significant progress has been made. "The
> plant's 35 percent complete in
> regard to construction," he says.
> 
> But the place is a total ghost town. What happened?
> 
> What happened here is that after three years of
> welding, pouring cement and
> laying miles of pipes and tons of steel,
> construction came to a screeching
> halt in 2005 because the Energy Department
> underestimated by 40 percent how
> strong the building must be to withstand an
> earthquake. We're talking about a
> building that would be full of radioactive liquid.
> 
> 
> "In a building like this, you need to build it to
> ensure that it withstands
> whatever an earthquake may pose - if there is one -
> because we absolutely do
> not want a breech of this radioactive material in
> the atmosphere," says Gene
> Aloise of the Government Accountability Office
> (GAO), Congress' investigative
> arm.
> 
> But here's what 60 Minutes has learned: that the
> Energy Department and the
> contractor, Bechtel, went ahead with the plant
> knowing their seismic standard
> might be off. Just as construction was about to
> begin in July 2002, an
> independent safety board sent a letter, warning the
> department.
> 
> "Energy debated with the safety board for almost two
> years over the
> standards," says Aloise.
> 
> "Ok, let me understand this. This is brought up as
> an issue in 2002. Instead
> of going back right then, they debate until 2005,
> during which time they're
> building the building?" Stahl asked Aloise.
> 
> "They're building the building," he replied.
> 
> They were building it using the wrong seismic
> standard. Because they did
> factor in some margin of safety, the contractor,
> Bechtel, has told the Energy
> Department there is no restructuring required on the
> foundation or the walls.
> 
> But Aloise says what they do have to fix are the
> internal components of the
> building. "Hangers, piping, vessel supports, all of
> this interior of the
> building, where the technology's going to rest. That
> all has to be
> re-engineered," he explains. "They have to re-do
> tens of thousands of
> designs."
> 
> The seismic miscalculation is costing at least $800
> million and a two- to
> 
=== message truncated ===


+++++++++++++++++++
"People will be shocked to see how safe it is to live in New York City."
ANDREW KARMEN, a sociology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, on murder trends in the city.

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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