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Scientists Complete More Tests at Hanford

"YAKIMA, Wash. - Scientists have completed another round of tests on a process that would turn nuclear waste stored in underground tanks at the Hanford nuclear site into glass for long-term disposal.

About 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from World War II and Cold War-era plutonium production sit in 177 aging underground tanks at Hanford, less than 10 miles from the Columbia River. "


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041021/ap_on_sc/hanford_waste&e=5


And some of it has leaked.

"An estimated 67 of the tanks leaked radioactive brew into the soil, contaminating the aquifer and threatening the Columbia River."

What Nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man.

And those of us that live downstream of Hanford know one thing for sure ... the government doesn't care now and won't care in the future until people begin dying and lawsuits flying.

A willingness to make a mess and expect someone else to clean it up is an attribute of children and politicians ... pretty much the same thing these days.

Thanks, Dan. This is the first article I've seen that really made me aware of the magnitude of the problems at Hanford. I don't blame the people for wanting the Gov't to clean up what they've got before bringing in more.

YAKIMA -- An appellate court has overturned a lower court's ruling barring the Energy Department from reclassifying high-level waste at a nuclear site in Washington state, saying it was too soon to consider opponents' claims.

A federal judge in Idaho last year barred the Energy Department from reclassifying the waste after the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Snake River Alliance, the Yakama Nation and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes filed suit.

The Energy Department maintains that some highly radioactive residue in the waste tanks is too expensive to extract. The department has proposed reclassifying it as less dangerous, combining it with concrete grout and leaving it in place.

What the government is actually proposing is doing nothing and hoping that nothing will happen. Unfortunately their track record in such matters is abysmal. The radioactive waste is expected to leak into the Columbia river in the next few years and that will be the end of Columbia River salmon and a lot of fresh water currently used for drinking and irrigation of food crops.

Needless to say the Bush administration considers us as valuable as worker ants are to the queen. Plenty more where they came from.

Several variants of the cold fusion process have demonstrated<for YEARS>, by experimental apparatus, the transmutation of radioactive isotopes into stable isotopes, the Gleason Cell for example. It turns thorium nitrate into copper and titanium isotopes <90% conversion>within 3 hours with 3KWH of electricity in a cell about the size of your fist. Why don't you hear about it? Simple : vested interests : nuc-waste glassification companies and yucca mountain backers<the shipping companies slobbering all over themselves in anticipation of BIG BUCKS transporting nuc-waste to NV>. We already HAVE the nuc-waste processes to get rid of the radioactive isotopes right there at the source, and cheaply as well; people's GREED is the real problem.