A Glass Nightmare: Cleaning Up the Cold War’s Nuclear Legacy at Hanford(spectrum.ieee.org)
spectrum.ieee.org
A Glass Nightmare: Cleaning Up the Cold War’s Nuclear Legacy at Hanford
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/a-glass-nightmare-cleaning-up-the-cold-wars-nuclear-legacy-at-hanford
9 comments
> 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.
Why not just mix the contents of the tanks together, and then develop one vitrification process?
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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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/article238...
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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 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.
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 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.
From wikipedia it seems Ci is a curie.
Tritium is a hydrogen isotope, just releasing it in the atmosphere where it will float up and eventually escape seems a possibility. Not suggesting, just asking, really.
OTOH I thought tritium was rather valuable. I guess finding a buyer might be the difficult part.
Out of interest, I have a beta light (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nite-Tritium-Keyring-Glowring-Colou...) and it's still glowing well after a couple of years. I've wondered how much energy it actually contains, were it released at once - any one know?
Tritium is a hydrogen isotope, just releasing it in the atmosphere where it will float up and eventually escape seems a possibility. Not suggesting, just asking, really.
OTOH I thought tritium was rather valuable. I guess finding a buyer might be the difficult part.
Out of interest, I have a beta light (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nite-Tritium-Keyring-Glowring-Colou...) and it's still glowing well after a couple of years. I've wondered how much energy it actually contains, were it released at once - any one know?
You could easily calculate the contained energy. Find the average mass difference between the current state and its decay products and plug it into That Famous Formula.
Leaded glass is just doped with lead; a relatively small percentage of lead to glass. That works for purpose, but I think you'd need a lot more lead in the glass that CRT tubes have to effectively block the various radiation types and energies you're going to get from waste encapsulation.
Interesting idea tho. Someone should do the science.
Interesting idea tho. Someone should do the science.
By all means, add more lead to the process. I propose reclaimed ammo from firing ranges and other spent lead that requires disposal.
End result targeted should be solid, stable, and human safe to be next to.
End result targeted should be solid, stable, and human safe to be next to.
Interesting proposal. Hadn't thought about spent ammo, but it's a huge problem. The issue there is safe transport and handling, but that's prolly a minor issue grand scheme. More interesting is the encapsulation tech needed to 1) block the relevant radiation effectively enough for it not to be a proximity hazard, 2) to be stable enough for long enough to see the dangerous half-life out, and 3) to encapsulate the lead as well as the radioactives. Not sure if glass encapsulation does that...again, there's science to be done here.
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!
This is my hometown! I haven't grown any extra appendages yet from the radiation if you were curious. :)
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...
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...
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.
So, uh... anyone else notice that a Supermutant apparently fell into one of the single-shell underground storage tanks? I needed that laugh!
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?
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.
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.