BP spill is already far larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez

[richelles]

I don't know how I managed to stay away from Hanford since it seemed if something was radioactive I was always examining the restricted area to see if it had barriers at the correct distance from the source. However over the years I heard a lot about it and that it seemed to be the leading candidate for Superfund cleanups which never seemed to get started. I knew what was going on at Oakridge, Tennessee but it always seemed the late night coffee conversations didn't consider it to be in the same class as Hanford.

At one time when tanks at Hanford were leaking their contents I saw some tanks being constructed for testing as above ground repositories to contain what must have been some really frightful mixtures that had been sequestered during the Plutonium production era during WWII. The reagents that were being used to verify how long those tanks might last were a witches brew of spectacular compounds. If that area is ever going to be cleaned up to a satisfactory level it will have to involve half the dirt in Washington State being sequestered for eternity.

I remember the Navy putting out information which people in the know said was false about how they were going to take care of the reactor vessels so the material they were made from could be reused. From the few land based nuclear facilities that I was aware of being re-mediated to salvage I failed to understand how they were going to be disposed of as normal scrap steel. The problem to me is a total NIMBY attitude about where the material is going to be disposed of for what might actually turn out to be an eternity.

There was a serious discussion about putting all such nuclear waste into areas where Plate Tectonics would carry it deep into the interior of the Earth where it could remain for the necessary amount of time. A second school was to use the residual radioactivity as fuel and burn it to the final fission products which would be harmless. But unless that turned out to be gold or another precious metal cost was a problem. So nuclear bears a curse because not enough money is available for the necessary research to discover the final end product we can coexist with.