23 Feb (NucNet): The governor of Washington state has said there are six, single-shell tanks leaking radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear site, but there is “no immediate or near-term health risk”.
Jay Inslee said in a statement that energy secretary Steven Chu confirmed the news yesterday.
The statement said that last week, Mr Inslee was told about one of those tanks. There are a total of 177 tanks at the Hanford site, 149 of which are single-shell tanks, the statement said.
Mr Inslee said: “I met with Secretary Chu in Washington DC this afternoon, and he told me that the Department of Energy [DOE] has now confirmed there are six tanks leaking radioactive waste at Hanford.
“There is no immediate or near-term health risk associated with these newly discovered leaks, which are more than five miles from the Columbia River.”
State officials announced last week that one of Hanford’s underground tanks was leaking between 150 gallons to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers.
The DOE said last week that monitoring has not identified significant changes in concentrations of chemicals or radionuclides in the soil near the tanks.
The DOE said the tank that was originally identified as leaking is Tank T-111, a 530,000-gallon capacity underground storage tank built between 1943 and 1944, and put into service in 1945. T-111 contains approximately 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture of solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency.
Mr Inslee said this is “disturbing news for all Washingtonians”. His statement said: “One week ago, Secretary Chu told me there was one tank leaking. But he told me today that his department did not adequately analyse data it had that would have shown the other tanks that are leaking.”
Mr Inslee sad this raises serious questions about the integrity of all 149 single-shell tanks with radioactive liquid and sludge at Hanford.
“I believe we need a new system for removing waste from these ageing tanks, and was heartened to hear that the Department of Energy is looking at options for accelerating that process,” Mr Inslee said.
In a letter to DOE staff earlier this month, Mr Chu said the DOE had made “historic progress” in cleaning up nuclear contamination left over from the Cold War, reducing the total footprint by nearly 75 percent and permanently cleaning up 690 square miles of contaminated land – an area more than 30 times the size of Manhattan.
Hanford was established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project to produce the first atomic bomb. It was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.
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