zerohedge | Engineers around the world have done a great job developing nuclear
technologies to serve mankind’s many endeavors: medical devices, power
generators, naval propulsion systems, or the most formidable weapons
ever built, so formidable that they could largely wipe out mankind and
its many endeavors.
However, engineers haven’t figured out yet what to do with the highly
radioactive and toxic materials nuclear technologies leave behind. They
leak through corroded containers, contaminate soil, water, and air, and
after decades, we try to deal with them somehow, but mainly we’re
shuffling that problem to the next generation. The enormous sums coming
due over time were never included in the original costs. We’re not even
talking about an accident, like Fukushima, whose costs will likely reach
$1 trillion, but about maintenance and cleanup.
For example, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, the
largest, most daunting environmental cleanup project in the US. More
than 11,000 people work
on it. Nine relatively small reactors on that property produced
plutonium, starting in 1943 through the Cold War. In 1987, the last
reactor was shut down. What remains are various structures, such as the
evocatively named “Plutonium Finishing Plant” (aerial photo: red “X” marks denote sections to be demolished) or the “Plutonium Vault Complex” that stored plutonium for nuclear weapons (photo of corridor).
Buried underground are 177 tanks containing 56 million gallons of
highly radioactive and toxic waste. The 31 oldest tanks, made of a
single layer of now rust-perforated carbon steel, have been leaking
highly radioactive and toxic sludge into the ground for decades.
Hence the “Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant,” a radiochemical processing facility. In its annual report
to Congress, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which has
jurisdiction over the “defense nuclear facilities” of the Department of
Energy (DOE), describes the task at Hanford:
After these wastes are retrieved from the tanks, the plant will chemically separate the waste into two streams of differing radioactive hazard and solidify them into glass in stainless steel canisters. The low-radioactivity glass will be disposed of onsite, while the high-level waste glass will be shipped offsite for permanent disposal once a repository is available.
Turns out, almost none of it, according to the report, can be done
safely or at all. And that “repository?” It doesn’t exist. Despite
decades of trying, the US has not been able to come up with one.
0 comments:
Post a Comment