Doubts grow about plan to dispose of Hanford's radioactive waste

Experts raise concerns about the complex technology intended to turn 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge at the former Hanford nuclear facility into glass and prepare it for safe burial.

RICHLAND, Wash. — On a wind-swept plateau, underground steel tanks that hold the nation's most deadly radioactive waste are slowly rotting. The soil deep under the desert brush is being fouled with plutonium, cesium and other material so toxic that it could deliver a lethal dose of radiation to a nearby person in minutes.

The aging tanks at the former Hanford nuclear weapons complex contain 56 million gallons of sludge, the byproduct of several decades of nuclear weapons production, and they represent one of the nation's most treacherous environmental threats.

Energy Department officials have repeatedly assured the public that they have the advanced technology needed to safely dispose of the waste. An industrial city has been under development here for 24 years, designed to transform the sludge into solid glass and prepare it for permanent burial.

But with $13 billion already spent, there are serious doubts that the highly complex technology will even work or that the current plan can clean up all the waste. Alarmed at warnings raised by outside experts and some of the project's own engineers, Department of Energy officials last year ordered a halt to construction on the most important parts of the waste treatment plant.

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(NOTE: This article does not address Fukushima directly but I include it because all nuclear facilities exist under the premise that someday the technology will exist to "clean up" all the deadly waste left behind. So far an effective means has not been developed. The waste from a nuclear facility must be segregated from humanity for literally millions of years.  I am downwind from this facility and in the event of a cataclysmic event at Hanford you likely are too.)