Cleanup lag at waste site criticized

[struggle4progress]

March 6, 2005

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — <snip>

The tanks are filled with waste from decades of atomic bomb manufacturing. Most of the material is high-level waste, which by law must be stabilized and buried. But in recent years the department has defined some of the material as "waste incidental to reprocessing," which does not require deep burial, and said it wants to cover it with grout and leave it in the tanks. <snip>

In Washington, some of the tanks date from the program to develop nuclear weapons in World War II. Many of the tanks have leaked, and some of their contents have reached the Columbia River, officials have said.

The department had planned to pump the contents of the tanks to a vitrification plant that would embed the worst of the wastes in glass. But it has slowed work on the plant too, after discovering that the area may be more vulnerable to earthquakes than first thought.

The vitrification process is expensive, and the department's proposed burial site, at Yucca Mountain, near Las Vegas, is too small for all the glass that would be needed. <snip>

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/NEWS/503060349/1002/NEWS01

[jpak]

1. DOE's waste vitrification programs are in disarray

http://www.ieer.org/reports/cleanup/marcstat.html

http://www.deprep.org/1998/FS98J09A.htm

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/loux05.htm

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/NGP/NWinCrisis.html

http://www.ieer.org/pubs/highlv3g.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/eternity/d1.html

Typical...

[NNadir]

2. Self deleted.