The Legacy Of Nuclear Is Not Looking Before Leaping

Article posted with permission from the author, Suzanne Hamner.

“Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap” – Samuel Butler.

This quote, attributed to Samuel Butler, is said to come from Aesop’s Fable called “The Fox and the Goat”, supposedly penned in 500s B.C. However, we see this in the Old Testament, predating Aesop, as well as the new. Here are just a few.

According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it – Job 4:8.

He who sows iniquity will reap vanity, and the rod of his fury will perish – Proverbs 22:8.

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The wicked earns deceptive wages, but he who sows righteousness gets a true reward – Proverbs 11:18.

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this will he also reap – Galatians 6:7.

So it has been with the central government of the united States. There is no more apparent application to the “look before you leap” concept than nuclear weapons and fuel production. In the haste to develop an atomic bomb before Hitler’s scientists did and end World War II, the government established “The Manhattan Project”. According to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council:

The Manhattan District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, created the previous year, built the Hanford Engineer Works, employing thousands of people in a secret project to separate plutonium from uranium to make nuclear bombs. Enrico Fermi had achieved nuclear fission at the University of Chicago for the first time in 1942. Now the U.S. Army was racing to develop the bomb before Hitler’s scientists did. The Manhattan Project, authorized by President Roosevelt in December 1942, included laboratories on the Clinch River in Tennessee, at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and at Hanford.

In the haste, no one thought of the legacy of nuclear bomb production – decades of nuclear waste.

For decades, more than 400 billion gallons of contaminated waste seeped into the earth around Hanford — a fact that was only made public years later due to a culture of secrecy born in wartime.

Currently, 177 massive underground tanks collectively hold 56 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Hanford site. Plans for how to contain and safely store that waste have been evolving and changing for years.

“These tanks are about a million gallons in volume, and they’re about 85 feet in diameter, about 30 feet tall. And then they are buried with the top of the tank at about a 12 feet level,” Subramanian told us. “So they’re buried quite a bit underground. And then each of those tanks is completely secondarily contained in another tank.”

About one-third of the tanks are known to have leaked, according to the DOE, and 28 have been double-walled. The plan is to do that for all 177 of the tanks, which were originally designed to last just 20 years.

Without a thought of what to do with the “waste” or what impact it could have on populations, the government created a legacy of nuclear waste that has to be managed, not for decades, but for 10,000 generations according to “SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy”. The movie is worth a watch to see what the community of San Onofre has encountered with the decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS) sitting right on the coastline and the handling of spent nuclear fuel.

Getting back to Hanford, the earliest reactors were designed to use water from the Columbia River for cooling and return the water contaminated with radioactive material back to the river. While the reactors were operating during the 1940s and 1950s, radioactivity contaminated the Columbia River.

Later reactors held cooling water in ponds to reduce its radioactivity before being released to the river. Since then, radioactivity that leaked from the ponds contaminated groundwater. In 2017 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that tests showed groundwater was contaminated with hexavalent chromium and strontium-90.  In some areas,  plumes of contaminated groundwater reached the river.  Crews have employed several strategies to block the plumes, all of which are intended to decontaminate the soil and ground water. 

If you recall, hexavalent chromium (chromium 6) was made famous with the class action suit against Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Anderson et. al. V. Pacific Gas and Electric, which prompted the movie, “Erin Brockovich”. Hinkley remains contaminated to this day with the genotoxic carcinogen hexavalent chromium.

The plan at the 670-acre Hanford Nuclear Reservoir is to use huge melters to turn the liquid waste into solid, but still radioactive glass; place that glass in steel containers for storage. This process is called vitrification. Another proposal involves shipping the waste via Department of Transportation-approved containers by truck to locations in Texas and Utah. This is a concern of those involved in the group Hanford Challenge.

One of the biggest safety concerns Hanford Challenge has involved an alternative to vitrification known as grouting — essentially immobilizing waste in concrete, rather than glass.

“[T]hey’re considering shipping tens of millions of gallons of tank waste off-site and grouting it,” she said. “So we’re really concerned around that proposal. We don’t know a lot of specifics. We don’t know if the waste is going to be shipped as a liquid or as a solid grouted form.

As DOE’s top Hanford manager, Vance said previous testing of grout indicates that it is safe. But he said before any decisions are made about the larger volumes of waste, they’re conducting another pilot called the Test Bed Initiative on a smaller amount.

“We’re going to treat the tank waste,” he said, “to remove the majority of the radiological content. The 2,000 gallons will be placed in Department of Transportation-approved containers, with really very benign chemical constituent and almost no radiological content. And the plan is to transport it via truck to locations in Texas and Utah, to demonstrate the capability to do that safely.”

Burke says Hanford Challenge and other environmental watchdogs have grave concerns about containing this kind of waste in concrete rather than glass.

“There was a grout program at Hanford in the 80s and it was shuttered in 1993. It was due to issues with successfully grouting the Hanford’s tank waste. So this is something that’s really, really difficult. A lot of the studies will look at other sites — Savannah River and other sites — that have successfully grouted tank waste. And yet Hanford’s waste is like no other. It has a really varied complex chemistry.” [The Savannah River Plant is located near Savannah, Georgia.]

…

But whatever form it’s moved in, 2,000 gallons of treated radioactive waste is scheduled to be trucked through routes in the Pacific Northwest as part of the Test Bed Initiative — and that is scheduled to begin in 2025.

Just this past summer, a leak, considered “small”, according to Brian Vance, who is in charge of the work at Hanford, occurred from “Tank T-101 and the T-farm”. Vance said “we’re going to call it a leaking tank.”

You can watch this video about Hanford Challenge.

But here is the take-away – nuclear weapons and energy were developed WITHOUT any means to clean up the toxic waste produced. Even today, there is no technology to detoxify nuclear waste, making it safe. The world is awash with nuclear waste that contaminates the air, water, soil, environment, and people.

We hear about the Three Mile Islands, the Chernobyls, and the Fukushimas. But, how many heard about the accidental release of a radioactive cloud from San Onofre and the deadly radioactive waste from SONG stored near the ocean in barrels designed to last about 20 or so years? SONG wanted to transport the waste from San Onofre to “waste sites” located in other states, but the people of San Onofre opposed it because it was dangerous for transport and the residents believed other States should not have to suffer from the folly that is San Onofre nuclear generation station.

According to various sources, there are about 54 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 94 nuclear reactors in 28 states. These plants and reactors generate 20% of US electrical needs. But, not a lot of people know it takes electrical power coming into these plants to produce 20% of US electrical needs. [See SOS documentary].

What price are we paying to generate 20% of US electricity? What price has the world paid for nuclear power – not just with the major accidents and leaks/spills, but with the generation of nuclear waste without any means to decontaminate it?

The Department of Energy engages in a slick campaign regarding nuclear energy, calling it “the most reliable energy source”. Yet, it doesn’t mention the waste produced, what happens to that waste, how that waste is stored long-term, or any means to decontaminate the waste. All the people hear about is its reliability and generation of “carbon-free” power. But, what is not being told to the public is that over 40 nuclear sites in the united States have experienced tritium leaks. See the reports from 2017 and 2020.

Note the qualifying statement in both reports. “After a radioactive leak or spill, tritium is generally the first radionuclide to be identified in groundwater. This is because tritium travels as a form of water through the soil faster than other radionuclides.” The 2020 report indicates that eleven sites have leaks or spills of tritium in excess of what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe into the groundwater.

Tritium is the “first” radionuclide to be detected. What about others? Are there others? How long would it take others to be identified? Is all that is being monitored is tritium? All good questions that deserve answers. Unfortunately, the public is not going to be getting any.

In March of 2023, Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear plant, located 35 miles NW of Minneapolis, upstream from the city on the Mississippi River, reported a leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water containing tritium that contaminated the groundwater. The actual leak occurred in November 2022, but the public only learned about it in March of 2023. Xcel admitted the contaminated groundwater moved beyond the original location. While Xcel assured the community the contamination was below “safe levels” established by the EPA, can we be sure officials are providing accurate reporting to the public? While it was reported Xcel was “treating” the contaminated water, there is no report of how it is “treating” the contaminated water. Moreover, the plant reportedly had a “small” tritium leak in 2009.

According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, “Tritium cannot be removed by purification, and remains in the treated water”, in regards to the accident at Fukushima. One can bet the public did not hear that the Indian Point plant has been discharging contaminated water into the Hudon River since the 1960s. These documents indicate that none of the tritium is removed.

According to Wikipedia (yes, it can be unreliable):

The United States Government Accountability Office reported more than 150 incidents from 2001 to 2006 of nuclear plants not performing within acceptable safety guidelines. In 2006, it said: “Since 2001, the ROP has resulted in more than 4,000 inspection findings concerning nuclear power plant licensees’ failure to fully comply with NRC regulations and industry standards for safe plant operation, and NRC has subjected more than 75 percent (79) of the 103 operating plants to increased oversight for varying periods”.^[4]

It seems that 75 percent of nuclear plants cannot fully comply with Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations and industry standards for safe plant operation. What is the industry standard for “safe operation”? What is considered “safe”? As we have seen, the EPA established a safe limit for tritium in groundwater. However, is that amount (20,000 pCi(picocuries)/L) actually safe? The half-life of tritium is 12.3 years. Tritium exposure via ingestion, skin or other biological tissue absorption, and inhalation can cause health risks.

More can certainly be written about this topic, but this is enough to get readers started doing their own research.

The foolhardiness of developing nuclear weapons and energy before having a decontamination process for nuclear waste will haunt the united States and the world for untold generations to come. Every government and energy department always up-plays the benefits of nuclear energy while downplaying or ignoring the cost due to accidents, toxic waste accumulation, and the health costs to workers and the public. The benefit of this cost is use of electricity by other means [See SOS documentary] to produce 20% of the electrical needs of the US, while exposing the population to contamination that cannot be contained. Somehow, the benefit doesn’t outweigh the cost. But, you can be the judge of that for yourself.