I hear bad things about West Richland

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by dbvoice

Has there ever been any issues with the nuclear power plants around the area. My husband has an upcoming interview in Richland and I feel really uncomfortable relocating my family to a place that has nuclear reactors and nuclear waste. What are the cancer rates there? Do they have "fall-out" drills in the schools? What over all safety measures do they take?

It's not really much of a health issue nowadays, but has been in the past. Occasionally someone out at the site will get 'crapped up', as they call it, but rarely severely. I've lived here 12 years and the closest thing I've seen to public worries about nuclear anything was the commercials sponsored by CSEPP concerning the nerve gas they were incinerating down at Umatilla (how to visqueen your door in case of a leak).

What you should understand is that there is far less nuclear energy at Hanford than in the past, though there's still a great deal of nuclear waste. I think there's one functioning power plant, there's the Siemens (or whatever it's called) nuclear filling station, and there was the FFTF until it was decommissioned. The plutonium finishing plant, B reactor and much of the other stuff shut down long before. Plus, the site is very large. A lot of the older stuff is quite far north up on the Reach.

If you move here and you stress about nuclear stuff, you'll be about the only one. Maybe we should stress more about it; I don't know. I don't think it's in very good hands, and I don't buy the common whine that the slow cleanup is all the fault of unions and DOE. But then again, I am not a typical Tri-Cities resident in just about any way.

Oh, and speed traps? West Richland's are so bad it's like you died and went to Colfax or Raymond or South Bend.

[tcres]

Originally Posted by dbvoice

...I feel really uncomfortable relocating my family to a place that has nuclear reactors and nuclear waste. What are the cancer rates there? Do they have "fall-out" drills in the schools? What over all safety measures do they take?

I doubt there has been a fall-out drill since the cold war. I spent all of my 13 school years in the education system in the Tri-Cities and we never had any such drills.

I know a lot of people that voice concern and a discomfort with Hanford and to be honest none of them live in the Tri-Cities or even near here. It's always an individual that lives far from a nuclear reservation and has little to no knowledge of them. I am hoping our country will wake up and start building more nuclear power plants.

[vette-dude]

We still own a home in Richland, after a few years living in Tri Cities ,5 miles from Hanford, we moved to a beautiful home in Spokane... Don't know a lot about Handord, except what the average person researches on the internet and local library literature. It is probably very safe, but I'm surely not prepared to be the governments' potential guinea pig, just incase.