Fact Sheet on the Accident at Three Mile Island

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-co...mile-isle.html



Monday, May 1, 2006

Hanford cleanup cost soars to $11.3 billion ... if Congress will pay

It's costing Americans $1.4 million a day to build a facility to safely treat millions of gallons of radioactive and toxic waste stored in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's leak-prone underground tanks.

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- Evidence of new leaks, group reports

When the project is completed, the bill could total $38 for every man, woman and child in the nation -- that's if the $11.3 billion price tag doesn't swell even further. It has nearly tripled in less than six years, making it a massive taxpayer burden.

This is a critical time for the project. An increasingly impatient Congress is now deciding how much money to contribute to the effort -- considered the most important step in the cleanup of the sprawling desert site on the Columbia River. Some fear lawmakers could simply wash their hands of it and walk away.

"The whole house of cards is ready to collapse," said Gerald Pollet, director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group.
Double-walled tanks
Zoom P-I File
These double-walled tanks at Hanford each hold 1 million gallons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from bomb making. Built in 1984, they were later covered with 5 feet of dirt. The liquid waste that's inside them is slated to be pumped out and turned into glass.

The challenge of safely disposing of 53 million gallons of deadly waste left over from decades of plutonium production has caused the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors to stumble repeatedly.

Weak -- even negligent -- management has pushed the project's completion from 2011 back to 2017 or later and driven costs up by billions, according to reports from government agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and watchdog groups.

At the same time, environmental and health risks are mounting. The corrosive waste weakens the walls of the tanks and the risk of leaks keeps growing, regulators admit.

The federal officials running the Hanford cleanup and their contractors apologize for the delays and errors in cost calculations. They promise to do better.

"Everything that I do on this project each day is to identify with certainty what the costs and schedule basis is, and to restore confidence and credibility in this project," said John Eschenberg, the Energy Department's manager for the project.

Construction is under way on the massive "vitrification" project, which one day would turn the waste into a glassy compound that will trap the radioactive material for safe storage. But the department's contractor -- construction giant Bechtel National Inc. -- has had to put the brakes on most of the building due to safety and technical problems.

Countless additional factors have helped drive up costs. They include the initial miscalculation of the amount and cost of materials needed for the project and underestimation of the technical and regulatory hurdles facing the facility. In March, a team of experts identified more than two dozen issues that could prevent the plant from working as planned. The plant was expected to operate for nearly two decades.


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...hanford01.html


if you're gonna start pointing fingers don't forget to protect your balls...

Nuclear waste plans accident in waiting
Monday, May 01, 2006

They apparently began with the premise that there is no problem that is too big to bury.

And then some more problems cropped up, so they decided to rely on another method: If the facts seem to be working against you, then just change the facts.

The problem? Spent nuclear fuel is stored at sites all across the nation. The proposed solution? Bury it beneath a mountain 90 miles from Las Vegas.
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There are problems - major problems - with this fix. Imagine transporting radioactive nuclear waste across the nation, through cities and small towns and farm land, along rail lines and across rivers and past reservoirs. Imagine further an accident, a train plunging off its tracks, a truck crashing downtown in a metropolis. Imagine a terrorist cell learning the routes that will be taken on the way to Yucca Mountain.

The nightmarish scenarios are limitless.

But that is not the whole story. It gets even worse.

Scientists charged with examining Yucca Mountain apparently didn't like some of the facts they found in their studies. But they didn't let that stop them from giving Yucca supporters what they wanted.

While the U.S. attorney handling the case decided on Tuesday not to pursue criminal charges against the hydrologists who worked on Yucca Mountain, the facts, found in e-mails they exchanged from 1998 to 2000, are damning. One example:

Wrote one scientist: "This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff."

There is evidence that they fudged dates. And threw out facts that didn't work for them. And kept two sets of books.

They may not be facing criminal charges. But that is no reason to believe anything that has been said about Yucca Mountain by supporters of the waste-burial plans.

Locally, spent nuclear fuel is kept on site at the closed Yankee Atomic Electric Co. plant in Rowe. There are similar situations at facilities from coast to coast. While no one wants nuclear fuel stored in his back yard, a situation that is less than ideal should not present a chance to create a potential disaster.

But that's exactly what the Yucca Mountain plan would be. Even without the falsified science. The proposal is a calamity waiting to happen. It should be permanently shelved.

http://www.masslive.com/editorials/r...720.xml&coll=1

Last just the biggest/dumbets one ever and news from today... should i keep going or you wanna keep pointing fingers... russia is bad but that doesn't mean we ok cause we're not worse... which we probably are... is it just that hard to face it that you're being ruled by a dictator??? look at the years... it all starts in 2001... i wonder why... WAKE THE FUCK UP