– Radioactive Plutonium Detected In Air Near Hanford Nuclear Facility:
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Plutonium
“Everybody’s Freaked” – Washington Nuclear Facility Admits Second Radiation Leak, Workers Contaminated
Plutonium?
Just under two weeks since the emergency at the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington state (following a tunnel collapse), NBC’s local affiliate King5 reports Hanford’s owner, The U.S. Department of Energy, is scrambling to deal with a second emergency – signs have emerged that a massive underground double shell nuclear waste holding tank may be leaking.
The tank is known as AZ 101 and was put into service in 1976. The tank’s life was expected to be 20 years. Now it has been holding hot, boiling radioactive and chemically contaminated waste for 41 years.
“Emergency Alert” Declared At Nuclear Facility In Washington; Evacuation Ordered, No-Fly Zone In Place
Update 2: An aerial survey midmorning Tuesday showed an opening about 20 feet by 20 feet into the tunnel, which had been covered with about eight feet of soil. As Tri-CityHerald.com reports , the breach could expose the highly radioactive material disposed of in the tunnel to the atmosphere.
No airborne radiation had been detected as of about 10:30 a.m. Radiological surveys were continuing.
Instructions for people to shelter in place were expanded from central Hanford to all of Hanford, including LIGO and the reactor areas along the Columbia River, after the aerial survey. No one is being allowed to enter the site beyond the security barricades.
Russian MPs pass bill to suspend plutonium reprocessing deal with US
– Russian MPs pass bill to suspend plutonium reprocessing deal with US:
The State Duma has overwhelmingly voted in favor of a bill that suspends a Russian-American deal on reprocessing weapons-grade plutonium extracted from decommissioned warheads.The bill, submitted on October 3 by the president’s office, was backed by 445 MPs, with one abstention.
The reprocessing deal was ratified in 2000 and involved Russia and the US disposing of excessive plutonium by fabricating nuclear plant fuel from it and transmuting it in a reactor.
The US later decided that the process was too costly and that it would rather mix its plutonium with special dilutants and store it indefinitely.
Moscow sees that as a gross breach of the deal, saying the US could potentially restore the fissile material.
Read moreRussian MPs pass bill to suspend plutonium reprocessing deal with US
Expert: Billions of pieces Fukushima nuclear fuel have spread pretty much everywhere — “It’s truly frightening… wherever there’s cesium, there’s plutonium” — Atomic bomb had one pound of uranium… Fukushima had hundreds of tons — TV: “Abundant quantities” of plutonium are being found (VIDEO)
Radiation spike near Hanford nuclear waste site ‘natural’ – EPA
– Radiation spike near Hanford nuclear waste site ‘natural’ – EPA:
The US Environmental Protection Agency chalked elevated gamma radiation levels around America’s largest nuclear waste storage facility, the Hanford site, up to natural causes, but RT’s Alexey Yaroshevsky has found a few inconsistences in its claims.RT has reported extensively on the situation at Washington State’s Hanford Nuclear storage facility since various leaks and injuries to workers were reported. An incident on May 5th covered by RT, when radiation levels in the area adjacent to the site skyrocketed, prompted a federal investigation.
However, following the RT report, a local newspaper urged its audience not to “believe everything on the Internet” in an article extensively quoting a statement from the EPA that claimed the elevated radiation levels had a natural cause and were not connected to the Hanford facility in any way.
Read moreRadiation spike near Hanford nuclear waste site ‘natural’ – EPA
Officials for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are trying to determine if a second giant tank containing radioactive waste from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons is leaking
SPOKANE, Washington — Officials for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are trying to determine if a second giant underground tank containing radioactive waste from the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons is leaking, the U.S. Department of Energy revealed on Tuesday.
Air monitors attached to an aging tank known as AY-101 recently found radiation at higher than normal background levels, the agency said.
“This Is Catastrophic” – Thousands Of Gallons Of Deadly Radioactive Waste Leak At Hanford Nuclear Storage Site
Thousands of gallons of radioactive waste leaked from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Site in Washington State, as workers pumped sludge from the tank during the weekend. “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),” said former Hanford worker Mike Geffre.
The ongoing radioactive leak problems at the Hanford Site, a nuclear storage tank in Washington State, are nothing new.
We first wrote about the ongoing radioative leakage at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, in 2013.
As a reminder, during the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Alas, the site has been leaking ever since, as many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate and Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the neighboring Columbia River.
Gov’t: “Alarming” release of radioactivity from US nuclear site — AP: “Uncontrolled spread of contamination” — Official: Contains “high levels of radioactive isotopes” (VIDEO)
Tri-City Herald, Feb 21, 2016 (emphasis added): The Environmental Protection Agency has called the uncontrolled spread of small amounts of radioactive waste at Hanford “alarming” after a Nov. 17 windstorm. Surveys six miles north of Richland after the winds subsided found specks of contamination… The waste came from research and uranium fuel fabrication work… [W]inds were worse than usual… and Hanford officials knew they were going to have issues… “Washington Closure Hanford went out and started surveying to understand how far the contamination had spread,” said Stacy Charboneau, manager of the DOE Richland Operations Office… The waste had high levels of radioactive isotopes that grout does not bind well, said Dennis Faulk, EPA Hanford program manager.