
A Glass Nightmare: Cleaning Up the Cold War’s Nuclear Legacy at Hanford - samizdis
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/a-glass-nightmare-cleaning-up-the-cold-wars-nuclear-legacy-at-hanford
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samizdis
> No two of the 177 tanks contain exactly the same concoction, but they all
> pose a significant public risk. The site borders the Columbia River, which
> nourishes the region’s potato crops and vineyards, serves as a breeding
> ground for salmon, and provides drinking water for millions of people. So
> far, the aging, corroding vessels have leaked roughly 4 million liters.

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londons_explore
Why not just mix the contents of the tanks together, and then develop one
vitrification process?

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waste_monk
Mixing random industrial chemicals together? That doesn't seem like a very
safe solution (if you'll forgive the pun) to me.

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acqq
The article about the "lapses" of the contractor is also informative:

[https://www.tri-
cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article238...](https://www.tri-
cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article238286638.html)

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toomuchtodo
If anyone comes across this who has industry experience, I would be interested
in knowing if the consumption of leaded glass from CRT tubes that cannot be
recycled has been considered as feedstock as part of the waste vitrification
process, on account of the lead contents reducing ionizing radiation
emissions. This seems like an ideal mating of materials, with the end result
being large aggregate of slag that might warm but are more stable and safer
for humans than they otherwise might have been.

~~~
yummypaint
This sounds totally reasonable to me. However, i think the cost of processing
the waste and storing it long term is probably many orders of magnitude larger
than the cost of disposing of CRTs, so the economics of using them would be a
rounding error. Ive talked to some people who do research on glassification
for the DOE, and i suspect the desire to minimize unknown factors like
possible inconsisties in formulation of feedstocks will probably outweigh the
desire to recycle.

The cost of disposing of radioactive material is truly astronomical. For
example a few years ago i saw a $100k quote for getting rid of 300 Ci of
elemental tritium, which compared to the stuff in the hanford tanks is nearly
harmless and only has a 12.5 year half life. If you inhale it your body will
absorb a small fraction and flush it out as water. If i had to choose
something highly radioactive to be put in my body, it might be tritium.
Compare that to the stuff in the tanks, much of which has half lives more than
10k years and is "bone seeking" if it gets in your body. Compounding this even
further is that there are also heavy metals and other hazardous stuff mixed
in, which tends to multiply rather than add to costs. I guess what im saying
is this will be massively expensive, and that will probably be the determining
factor in most decisions.

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exmadscientist
Minor clarification/nitpick: shorter half-life is generally considered _more_
dangerous, all else being equal (which it never is, especially if you're using
Ci or Bq as your units, which correct for this by being disintegrations per
second).

The extreme example of this is Bi-209, which has a half-life of order 10¹⁹
years. Of course, it's perfectly safe to ingest, especially with pink dye and
a nice bottle!

~~~
yummypaint
It's true that things with shorter half lives have more decays per second for
the same number of nuclei. However, the type of and energy of the decay is
very important to the type of health impact it has, as well as how/how long
it's retained in the body. Tritium is relatively safe because it emits a very
low energy electron (<18 keV), which almost immediately ranges out in most
materials, especially water. The only way it can get you is if its sitting
right on top of your dna when it decays. Since it's hydrogen, it freely
exchanges with the hydrogens in the water in a persons body, and is excreted
quickly as a result. It doesnt accumulate in any particular place, which is
also a plus. The treatment for tritium is lots of water and a few beers.

Contrast that with actinides, some of which decay by neutron emission, alpha
emission, and spontaneous fission. This page has a good breakdown
[https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiationionizing/background.html](https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiationionizing/background.html)
alphas deposit alot of energy per unit length traversed, so alpha decay
happening inside the body is pretty destructive. Alot of actinides also
concentrate in bone marrow, which leads to leukemia.

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bubbleRefuge
My first official job after getting my CompSci degree was to work for a DOE
funded research center focused on remediation techniques under consideration
for various decommissioned nuclear energy sites. My job was to develop a
multimedia information system as well as multi criteria automated decision
making system focused on the various remediation technologies and their
efficacy as they were being tested at decommissioned nuclear power plants.
Hanford was one of those places. Oak Ridge was another. The job was cool at
first but there was no one to mentor me and a large part of the job was to
write monthly reports on progress. The reports were very important and they
were an important part of maintaining the grant. I think it would take me like
a week to complete the reports with all the editing and churn. After a while,
I came to hate the work. Wasn't getting valuable experience and pay was not
that good. So, I wound up moving to Silicon Valley to work for a enterprise
software vendor where one of my buddies helped me land a coding job. Hope they
finally get Hanford and Oak Ridge cleaned up!

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goodfight
This is my hometown! I haven't grown any extra appendages yet from the
radiation if you were curious. :)

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samizdis
I upvoted your comment earlier, taking your statement at face value and not
requesting pics :-) You might like to read the author's follow-up article:

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/visiting...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/visiting-
the-city-that-build-hanford-nuclear-site)

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samizdis
There's a follow-up piece on Spectrum by the same author. It looks like an
attempt to big-up the area and its locals, in case the previous piece seemed
like an attack on life there.

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/visiting...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/visiting-
the-city-that-build-hanford-nuclear-site)

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noodlesUK
Hanford is a truly interesting place to visit, steeped in Cold War scientific
history. However, it’s not all historical, there’s plenty of new science being
done there. For instance, the LIGO observatory at Hanford is a shiny new
facility working on cutting edge science. I don’t know what if any other work
is being done at the site, but it’s far from empty.

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isochronous
So, uh... anyone else notice that a Supermutant apparently fell into one of
the single-shell underground storage tanks? I needed that laugh!

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gttalbot
So they have spent these billions and achieved essentially nothing.
Pretreatment and high level waste vitrification are "deferred". The most
dangerous parts of the job, which are required to even start work are
deferred. How is this contractor still in business?

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isochronous
You could ask the same question about many government contractors. I would
dispute calling what they've done "nothing," though. Building a facility of
that size and complexity is obviously a non-trivial task, especially when
they're having to solve multiple large-scale problems that have never been
solved before.

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gttalbot
Taking 25 years to.build this facility is milking it on an almost astronomical
scale. There is no incentive to get anywhere, which is apparently why
executives there are being charged criminally. Hand waving about "many
government contractors" is bull. This is a shitshow. I love the Columbia River
Valley.

