http://www.clickorlando.com/news/national/feds-evacuate-workers-at-hanford-nuclear-site
This came over the news in Orlando Florida but the site is Hanford which is going through environmental cleanup.
Feds evacuate workers at Hanford nuclear site
Soil collapsed over a tunnel
By CARMA HASSAN AND ALANNE ORJOUX , CNN
Posted: 12:59 PM, May 09, 2017
Updated: 1:56 PM, May 09, 2017
(CNN) - The federal government evacuated some workers Tuesday at the Hanford Site, a former nuclear weapons production site in Washington state, after soil collapsed over a tunnel containing contaminated material.
"There are concerns about subsidence in the soil covering railroad tunnels near a former chemical processing facility. The tunnels contain contaminated materials," the US Department of Energy said in a statement. Workers in other areas of the Hanford Site have been told to stay inside.
More at the above link.....
We can't seem to keep these areas safe.....
The Hanford site is experiencing the same issues the Russians are dealing with at Chernobyl; radiation causes concrete to deteriorate and eventually crumble...
just like those 177 concrete storage tanks sitting there holding 53 million gallons of radioactive waste; it was reported years ago that 6 of them were leaking...
::)
Seeker
A lousy situation indeed. I also may start another thread in regards to mis-information put out regarding Fukushima. Just wondering how many sites have this issue.
Quote from: spacemaverick on May 10, 2017, 03:12:27 AM
A lousy situation indeed. I also may start another thread in regards to mis-information put out regarding Fukushima. Just wondering how many sites have this issue.
Awaiting your information and insights, maverick 8) in this new paradigm of fake news and bull poop, who can say?
Seeker
(http://media.spokesman.com/photos/2017/05/09/Tunnel_facts_29p3_t880.jpg?01b7637a2ab8106dff160cea68a6524d8d0e11ae)
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/may/09/tunnel-with-nuclear-waste-collapses-in-washington-/
HANFORD – Thousands of Hanford workers streamed out of the Washington nuclear reservation Tuesday while operators huddled to find a fix for a gaping hole in the roof of a tunnel that entombs rail cars full of radioactive equipment.
State and federal officials sought to ease fears of a leak of radioactive material, saying monitoring at the site shows no evidence of a release.
"The incident is moving from the emergency phase towards the recovery phase," the Department of Energy said Tuesday evening. "The workforce has safely left the site, other than personnel essential to the recovery plan."
Energy Secretary Rick Perry received briefings on the situation throughout Tuesday, his office said. After extensive testing at the site, "there has been no indication of worker exposure or an airborne radiological release," Perry's office said.
Workers discovered the hole in the tunnel next to a closed facility known as the PUREX plant, short for Plutonium Uranium Extraction, near the center of Hanford. The radioactive waste contained in the tunnel is a byproduct of the nation's effort to develop enough plutonium to fuel nuclear weapons from World War II through the Cold War.
continuing story....more at the link. What price do we pay for nuclear weapons and energy? Maybe we need to speed up the process for fusion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSWQlw2E23w&index=1&list=PLO4UFBdqq__nM_vydmNnKw8NcR8YYd-rZ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSWQlw2E23w&index=1&list=PLO4UFBdqq__nM_vydmNnKw8NcR8YYd-rZ)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86QlIK0eJeY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86QlIK0eJeY)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlIPYT4W-GU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlIPYT4W-GU)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CDYZbZJmqc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CDYZbZJmqc)
'Most toxic place in US': Hanford nuclear waste site tunnel collapses triggering emergency by RT News
Quote from: spacemaverick on May 10, 2017, 06:29:22 AM
(http://media.spokesman.com/photos/2017/05/09/Tunnel_facts_29p3_t880.jpg?01b7637a2ab8106dff160cea68a6524d8d0e11ae)
.
After looking at the illustration above, if the detail is accurate, no wonder it collapsed; it shows the tunnel structure to be wood, not concrete, and to be a flat beam structure instead of a buttressed arch design :o
What were they thinking?? (http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/fighting/fish-head-smash-smiley-emoticon.gif) (http://www.sherv.net/)
This leads me to wonder about the structure and components of those 177 inground storage tanks...
Seeker
I don't think the "mining cars" are accurate. I believe they're actual railroad cars, boxcar-like.
The enclosure seems pretty half-assed considering how the casks for nuclear waste are constructed.
ETA, Anniston, Alabama, Fort McClellan in particular, is considered to be the most toxic place on the planet.
Quote from: Irene on May 11, 2017, 03:50:58 AM
I don't think the "mining cars" are accurate. I believe they're actual railroad cars, boxcar-like.
I would be surprised if they were not steel tank cars...
QuoteThe enclosure seems pretty half-assed considering how the casks for nuclear waste are constructed.
Indeed; that is not the type of construction/ structures I am familiar with or have seen at Savannah River...
QuoteETA, Anniston, Alabama, Fort McClellan in particular, is considered to be the most toxic place on the planet.
I spent three months at the Anniston Army Depot in the early nineties doing site remedial/hazmat clean up work; I had to wear a level III hazmat suit with hood and mask, was not allowed out of the truck cab while in the work area, and had 4 different tox kits lying on the seat beside me in case of emergency situations...
at the end of the three months when we were rotated out and the next crew started, the three dump trucks we had been using were confiscated and scrapped per DOD/DOE/EPD guidelines 8)
there would have been a 15 month required interval before the crew I was part of could have returned for another tour...
Seeker
Quote from: the seeker on May 11, 2017, 04:14:43 AM
I would be surprised if they were not steel tank cars...
Indeed; that is not the type of construction/ structures I am familiar with or have seen at Savannah River...
I spent three months at the Anniston Army Depot in the early nineties doing site remedial/hazmat clean up work; I had to wear a level III hazmat suit with hood and mask, was not allowed out of the truck cab while in the work area, and had 4 different tox kits lying on the seat beside me in case of emergency situations...
at the end of the three months when we were rotated out and the next crew started, the three dump trucks we had been using were confiscated and scrapped per DOD/DOE/EPD guidelines 8)
there would have been a 15 month required interval before the crew I was part of could have returned for another tour...
Seeker
I was at Fort Mac for four months in the early 80's. Army depot for chem/bio and depleted uranium shells. Breathed it, absorbed it, drank it.
Yum. :-X
Is it conceivable that this event is another psyop...? I have to give some probability to that possibility.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-tunnel-collapses-nuclear-waste-site-20170509-story.html
I don't think this is a psyop at all
Thousands of workers at Hanford were told to stay home as efforts began to plug the 400-square-foot (37-square-meter) sinkhole in the earth over the unoccupied storage tunnel.
Officials said they detected no release of radiation and no one was injured in the collapse, though thousands of workers were forced to take shelter for several hours as a precaution. The cause of the collapse was not immediately known.
A gravel road was built to the collapse site, and workers wearing protective suits and breathing masks planned to fill the hole with 50 truckloads of dirt, the Energy Department said.
The rail tunnel was built in 1956 out of timber, concrete and steel, topped by 8 feet of dirt. It was 360 feet long (110 meters). Radioactive materials were brought into the tunnel by railcars. The tunnel was sealed in 1965 with eight loaded flatbed cars inside.
FOR SEEKER
The most dangerous waste at Hanford is 56 million gallons stored in 177 underground tanks, some of which have leaked.
Plans to embed the toxic stew in glass logs for burial have floundered. Construction of a $17 billion glassification factory has stopped because of design and safety issues.
The plan is to bury the glass logs at a nuclear waste dump carved inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a project that has been on the drawing board for three decades but has run into resistance from Nevada politicians, including former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.
President Donald Trump has proposed $120 million to restart the licensing process for the dump.
SEEKER - REGARDING THE STORAGE TANKS
http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/tankfarms
Tank Farms
Early Hanford scientists understood that these chemical and radioactive wastes could be hazardous to people or the environment, and decided to build a series of massive underground storage tanks ranging in capacity from 55,000 gallons to more than 1,000,000 gallons to hold the wastes. Scientists believed that the tanks would only be used temporarily until a permanent place to dispose of the waste was identified. Still, they required that the early tanks be constructed with robust materials consisting of a carbon steel shell surrounded by reinforced concrete. This proved to be a fortunate decision since many of the tanks remain in use to this day. No new waste from plutonium production has been added to the tanks in many years, but some of the waste that was originally put in them is still there.
Between 1968 and 1986, Hanford engineers built another 28 tanks to be used on the Site. These tanks were sturdier, made with a second shell to surround the carbon steel and the reinforced concrete called "double shell tanks". Three double shell tanks are in the 200 West Area, with another 25 found in the 200 East Area.
149 of these single shell tanks were built at Hanford between 1943 and 1964. 83 single shell tanks are located in the 200 West Area, with another 66 single shell tanks found in the 200 East Area. However, even with 149 tanks available, the volume of chemical wastes generated through the plutonium production mission far exceeded the capacity of the tanks. Some of the liquid waste did end up being put into holding facilities and some was poured into open trenches. Some of the wastes that were put into the tanks didn't stay there, as the heat generated by the waste and the composition of the waste caused an estimated 67 of these tanks to leak some of their contents into the ground. Some of this liquid waste migrated through the ground and has reached the groundwater.
Read the rest of the article from the government website provided. What a mess.
Quote. . . eight loaded flatbed cars inside.
So probably casks.
Quote from: Irene on May 11, 2017, 07:19:51 AM
So probably casks.
After reading all the available information regarding the lethality of the tunnels and the material stored inside, it doesn't matter what it is stored in; the above quoted article states a lethal dose rate of one hour
it is contradictary, tho, for it states the tunnel was un-occupied, but they are plugging it with dirt, which leads me to the conclusion that something is still in it that has to be dealt with...
Seeker
Who took all the pictures of the cave-in...? Hmmmm....
https://energy.gov/em/articles/hanford-railcars-make-final-stop-b-reactor-move-enhances-visitor
http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/photogallery/gal.cfm/80D4595B-A999-4C4D-BA51-B9D681A80FF0
Photos of train....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aXZWCyPCeU&feature=player_profilepage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aXZWCyPCeU&feature=player_profilepage)
Railcars....
Quote from: Irene on May 11, 2017, 07:19:51 AM
So probably casks.
No. After watching the available video of the cleaning and decon then pumping of concrete slurry into each one, it is pretty certain that all the cars used were box type slurry cars; the top of the tank car has doors that open, and the bottom has 3 drop gates to unload the material over a hopper or pit
if they have been sitting loaded since 1965 they will be so hot that nothing will decon them; all they can do is encapsulate the entire car inside and out in concrete and bury it away...
unless they can develope a stargate like portal to drop them out over the sun...
@Amaterasu: as for the pictures, could be drones, robotic cameras, or long range telephoto shots; I also don't doubt that some poor soul in a rad suit walked up to it to examine it...
Seeker
The really STUPID thing is we spent BILLION on Yucca Mountain a place in the Nevada Test Site that is already radioactive for the next 25,000 years
ALL the US waste could be stored there for the future when we learn how to use that radiation directly but NO Schmuck Harry Reid killed it and people are worried about transporting it cross country and would rather leave it where it is and rot
I don't get it
Stupid rule the USA
Quote from: zorgon on May 11, 2017, 11:55:21 PM
The really STUPID thing is we spent BILLION on Yucca Mountain a place in the Nevada Test Site that is already radioactive for the next 25,000 years
ALL the US waste could be stored there for the future when we learn how to use that radiation directly but NO Schmuck Harry Reid killed it and people are worried about transporting it cross country and would rather leave it where it is and rot
I don't get it
Stupid rule the USA
On the bright side Hairball Harry is gone, and I wonder what Joe Sixpack would say if they knew that we have been hauling nuke waste across the country for the last 50 years, especially from the Savannah River Project to Fort Smith Arkansas...
8)
Seeker
The focus on Hanford makes me wonder what they're diverting attention from. Yes, Hanford is a mess, as are numerous other areas, but what are they purposely not talking about.
Shasta
Some questions along with answers from the Department of Ecology in the State of Washington....
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/nwp/sections/tankwaste/closure/pages/tank_leak_FAQ.html
(http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/nwp/sections/cleanup/twstorage/images/B203-204_small.gif)
There are many illustrations along with answers to questions at the above link. Instead of posting all of them here, it is best to go to the link. Very informative regarding the issues and the processes to take care of the problems.