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Conservation Concerns in
Washington: Hanford Cleanup, Wilderness
2011 Activities: The Washington chapter is
awaiting the U.S. Department of Energy's response to the chapter's
support for Alternative 6B in DOE's Tank Closure and Waste Management EIS.
Alternative 6B would entail "clean closure" of the 177 tanks that hold an
estimated 53 million gallons of hazardous and radioactive wastes
leftover from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's 40-plus years of
weapons plutonium production. Washington chapter members
toured Hanford on April 28, 2011. From a
distance, they saw "cocooned" plutonium production reactors, processing
facility "canyons" used to extract plutonium from irradiated fuel,

Hanford
B Reactor. From this view, visitors can see where fuel rods and cooling
water pipes were threaded through the graphite moderator. (Photo: DOE) |
and
the closed Fast Flux Test Facility, a liquid metal-cooled reseach
reactor that was built to test materials for the
now discontinued
fast breeder reactor
program. In addition, they visited one of the work sites where mixed
radioactive and hazardous chemical waste is being pumped out of
underground storage tanks, viewed an enormous landfill for Hanford's
low-level radioactive, hazardous and mixed wastes, and saw
the
construction site for a vitrification plant designed to stabilize tank
wastes within glass for permanent disposal. The group
visited the B Reactor, a National Historic Landmark that was the
world's first full-scale nuclear reactor, which irradiated uranium fuel
to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, including the bomb dropped on
Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. (Note: Taking of photographs was
not permitted on the tour.)
For
more information about Hanford, read ConservAmerica's
commentary on Hanford and the cleanup project.
2010 Activities:
The Washington chapter signed on to an April 29, 2010 letter
to Energy
Secretary Steven Chu urging him to withdraw Records of Decision that
select Hanford as a disposal site for large volumes of low-level
radioactive waste and mixed low-level radioactive waste.
On
March 12, 2010, the chapter filed an official comment
letter on the Department of Energy's draft Tank
Closure
and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement for Hanford. The
document
examines alternatives for retrieving, treating, storing, and/or
disposing of radioactive and hazardous waste. The Washington chapter
strongly recommended that DOE eliminate consideration of shipping
offsite radioactive waste to Hanford for storage and/or processing.
Background:
Hanford is
the most polluted place in the Western Hemisphere. The radioactive and
chemical byproducts of plutoniuim production created a huge legacy of
wastes, including nearly 500 billion gallons of wastes dumped into
unlined soil trenches, ponds, French drains, and injection wells. At
least one-third of the 177 tanks have leaked a plume of wastes that
endangers the Columbia River.
In
1989, Washington State, the U.S. Department of Energy, and
Environmental Protection Agency signed the Tri-Party Agreement, a
binding agreement that calls for cleanup of wastes by negotiated
milestones. But poor federal management has pushed cleanup of the tanks
back repeatedly and driven up the costs. Estimated cost of the
vitrification plant to dispose of the wastes has soared past $11
billion.
In
2009, the state, Department of Energy, and EPA revised their agreement
to extend cleanup deadlines. The deadline for removing waste from
single-shell tanks was extended from 2018 to 2040, and the completion
deadline for treating tank waste was extended from 2028 to 2047.
Wilderness
The
National Wilderness Preservation System protects pristine public lands
where, in the eloquent words of the Wilderness Act, "the earth and its
community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a
visitor who does not remain." As of October 2011, the system contains
more than 109 million acres of forests, deserts, wetlands, and other
natural areas, of which more than 4.5 million acres are in Washington.
On
February 10,
2011, Congressman Dave Reichert, R-WA, reintroduced bipartisan
legislation to expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness by 22,000 acres, or 6
percent. The bill also would designate the Pratt River and the Middle
Fork of the Snoqualmie River as wild and scenic. “Americans can find
common ground in protecting what is most valuable to us - the naturally
beautiful terrain and wildlife that helped shape history and people of
the American West," Congressman Reichert said.
Congress
should pass Congressman Reichert's legislation this year.
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