Money for nothing [Hanford nuclear waste reservation]

摘要

In the desert of eastern Washington State, about 350 km fromnSeattle, rests more than 200000 m3 Of radioactive andnchemically hazardous waste. A legacy of over 50 years of nuclear weaponsnproduction, the waste is a mix of liquids, solids, sludges, and gasesnthat sits in 177 aging steel tanks. So far more than a third of thesentanks, which are buried underground, have leaked or are suspected tonhave done so, releasing an estimated 3800 m3 of hazardousnradioactive materials into the soil. Some of this leakage has seepednmore than 60 meters down into groundwater about 10 km from the ColumbianRiver, the most important waterway in the northwestern United States.nFor more than 10 years, the US Department of Energy (DOE) has tried tondevise a plan to treat this waste, first to stabilize it and then tondispose of it. To date, more than U S $5 billion has been spent on thisnchallenge, with little to show for it. Construction of facilities tontreat the waste has not yet begun, and the history of this radioactivencleanup has been punctuated by failed designs, false starts, a varietynof technical and financial problems, and changing policies. By DOE's ownncalculations, to complete this project, it will have to spend roughly $1nbillion a year at Hanford for the next 40 years. The reasons for thisnstate of affairs are complex. They involve technical and managerialnshortcomings in the face of unique challenges that are unlike anythingnelse the world has ever seen. The tank waste itself is extremelyndifficult to retrieve, and can be safely manipulated or sampled only bynworkers who are shielded and trained