[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION: Hanford (WA) tank cleanup delay

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

U.S. government proposes 17-year delay in start of Hanford nuclear tank cleanup -- until 2039

by Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles TImes (CA)
November 18, 2015

The Energy Department has proposed a 17-year delay in building a complex waste treatment plant at its radioactively contaminated Hanford site in Washington state, pushing back the full start-up for processing nuclear bomb waste to 2039.

The department submitted the 29-page plan in federal court as part of a suit to amend an agreement with the state that requires the plant to start operating in 2022.

A series of serious technical questions about the plant’s design have caused one delay after another. Two of the major facilities at the cleanup site, which resembles a small industrial city, are under a construction halt ordered in 2013 by then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The plant, located on a desert plateau above the Columbia River, is designed to transform 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge, currently stored in underground tanks, into solid glass that could theoretically be stored for thousands of years.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-na-hanford-delay-20151118-story.html

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
LSiegel@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org

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