Concerns with the tanks at Hanford facility

On April 3 an article was published in the Spokesman Review that I find extremely worrisome, it said, “Underground tanks that hold a stew of toxic, radioactive waste at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site pose a possible risk of explosion, a nuclear safety board said in advance of confirmation hearings for the next leader of the Energy Department.

“State and federal officials have long known that hydrogen gas could build up inside the tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, leading to an explosion that would release radioactive material...”

This very thing happened in the Central Ural Mountains of Russia (near Chelyabinsk) in late December 1957, or early January 1958, because on Jan. 9 Radio Moscow devoted a large segment of its airtime to radiation sickness and a detailed list of preventive measures. This was confirmed by Soviet exiles who had been in the area at the time and who had witnessed the after effects. This explosion caused high levels of chemical and radioactive fallout. Isotopes released indicated an accident involving waste storage operations associated with the production of weapons grade plutonium, much like Hanford.

This was kept a deep dark secret, but was finally confirmed by one of the research papers, which had been missed by the Soviet censors, indicating the samples had come from the Chelyabinsk area. Traveling through the area in 1960, a road sign warned drivers not to stop for the next 30 kilometers and to drive through at maximum speed with windows closed. On both sides of the road as far as one could see, the land was dead, no villages, no towns, no cultivated fields or pastures, no herds, only the chimneys of destroyed homes, no people, NOTHING! Twenty-three square kilometers completely devastated by the explosion of one waste tank.

Would there be a chain reaction with the many waste tanks at Hanford? Can we even imagine the devastation?

LaVerne Kautz, Spokane Valley