HANFORD

Nuke dump an environmental wasteland

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A stainless steel tank the size of a basketball court lies buried in the sandy soil of southeastern Washington state, an aging remnant of US efforts to win World War II. The tank holds enough radioactive waste to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. And it is leaking.
For 42 years, tank AY-102 has stored some of the deadliest material at one of the most environmentally contaminated places in the country: the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. This complex along the Columbia River holds a storied place in American history. It was here that workers produced the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped by the US on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 - effectively ending the second world war.

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There isn't much to see at these tank farms. Gravel fields cover the tanks themselves. Exhaust pipes jut out of the ground above each of them. Underground, they hold a bubbling, brewing stew of radionuclides, hazardous chemicals and nitrates. Two radionuclides comprise much of the radioactivity: cesium-137 and strontium-90. Both take hundreds of years to decay, and exposure to either would increase a person's risk of developing cancer.


re-read the bold three times... sound familiar.... sound 'played down' currently?

AY-102 was the first double-walled tank, put into service in 1971 with an intended lifespan of 40 years. The tank contains chunks of solids - many common metals, including aluminum, nickel, lead, silver, copper, titanium and zinc - as well as other common elements. It also holds more than a dozen radionuclides, such as plutonium, uranium, strontium and cesium, all of which can cause cancers upon contact.


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