File under "in case you missed it while reading all those amusing or outraging tweets of the Trump era". Support for Trump or not, one of the consequences of Trump's flamboyant messaging is that for four years, who the hell really knows what all has actually taken place in some of our government agencies?
From a piece in VQR Online, no less (possibly better known previously as the Virginia Quarterly Review): reporting on some
money-saving Trump-era changes by the Department of Energy on handling the ongoing, unavoidable need to minimize damage from the
Hanford Site's deteriorating containment of hazardous byproducfs of former nuclear materials processing. Both highly radioactive and highly toxic related chemical stews are involved.
Trump era approach: corral some of the erstwhile public oversight, redefine hazard levels, extend the timeline for devising and implementing safer storage regimes.
Yeah nobody voted for that but it did meet Trump era intent to accelerate deregulation and help fund a tax cut.
www.vqronline.org
...It wouldn’t take much for a tank to fuel a massive explosion, one that Tom Carpenter, executive director of the watchdog group Hanford Challenge, says could spread radiation over a staggering area: Washington, Idaho, Oregon, “probably Utah and maybe Canada, depending on the wind direction and speed.” And some of the tanks at Hanford reached the end of their design life during the Vietnam War. As the site’s infrastructure ages, it’s hard to overstate the danger. Carpenter warns that the consequences of a tank fire would be on the order of Fukushima. (Dan Serres, conservation director of Columbia Riverkeeper, points toward Chernobyl.)
The Department of Energy (DOE) has adopted a closed-door approach to managing nuclear sites, which exacerbates anxieties over these risks.
In a 2019 report, the DOE extended its timeline for cleaning up Hanford’s waste until 2100; meanwhile, its aging infrastructure has only heightened safety concerns and escalated expenses. In 2018, the DOE’s own estimates of their financial liability grew by $110 billion—almost a fifth—primarily due to an increase in the cleanup budget at Hanford.
In the face of these rising costs, the DOE announced in 2019 that it would redefine what constitutes “high-level radioactive waste” under federal law, which would allow it to leave additional waste in place, rather than transferring it to safer, long-term storage. The DOE estimates that this relabeling could save the agency between $73 and $210 billion. When applied to Hanford, it would allow the tanks holding nuclear waste to be filled with concrete and left where they are, after which the DOE has promised a 100-year-long monitoring period.
Heh. WTF... so... ? Was there an earlier promise to monitor
all the waste for a shorter period while working to transfer it to safer and newer storage facilities? Apparently these promises are good until inconvenient for the next desired round of tax cuts for the wealthy amongst us.
A century of monitoring might seem sufficient, but the timeline of nuclear contamination is measured on a different scale. Even after the monitoring period, some of Hanford’s waste will still be radioactive. One of plutonium’s isotopes has a half-life of 24,100 years; other radioisotopes, such as iodone-129, are around for much longer than that. “If you inhale strontium-90,” Carpenter said, referring to a radioactive particle widely found around Hanford, “and it kills you, and you’re buried in the ground, those radionuclides will persist around your grave.” He added: “They can get into food supplies again. They essentially never go away.”
So I'm really impressed with a DOE promise to monitor the stuff for 100 years after they store it in concrete.
For critics, these long-term consequences raise concerns about the agency’s priorities. “The DOE is both paying for the cleanup and determining how much is good enough,” says Jeff Burright, a nuclear waste remediation specialist at the Oregon Department of Energy. “This creates an institutional conflict of interest.”
This new approach to waste management could have a profound impact on the environment, as well as human health. If Hanford’s tanks are left in place, it is likely that their radioactive pollutants and heavy metals will contaminate one of the country’s largest rivers, the Columbia. David Trimble, of the Government Accountability Office, describes this decision-making as “DOE has got the steering wheel from Mom and Dad and are now running for the highway.”
Yeah it's not the fault of the DOE itself, it's the Republicans' focus on deregulation and on cutting taxes.
www.rollingstone.com
