Nuclear waste long-standing problem for U.S.
Lewis DiuguidNuclear waste will not go away — literally.
It takes thousands of years for it not to be a health hazard. But the country produces a lot of it annually.
Finding a place to put it remains a problem as well as keeping it contained. Washington state is wrestling with just that, reporting that about 1,000 gallons of nuclear waste per year may be leaking from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Government officials are evaluating how to effectively remove the remaining material from the tanks causing the problems. Moving the offending material from tanks built in the 1940s at the dawn of the U.S. nuclear age will just transfer the problem, not solve it.
CNN reports that the 586-square mile Hanford site houses close to 200 underground tanks full of radioactive sludge, of which 149 are single-shell tanks. There currently is no threat of a breach into groundwater or the Columbia River.
But what’s clear is that building any new nuclear anything is the wrong step for the nation. The country has a massive nuclear waste problem now.
Creating more waste is the wrong way to go.
George Hunsucker
Northland
2 months, 3 weeks agoHow sweet would this be? Of course, all the ecofreaks would be out of cushy jobs, but that’s the price of progress…..
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/02/27/could-clean-coal-power-cars/?test=latestnews