Nuke ‘Em, Blast ‘Em and How

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were intended to be part of a terrorist plot that included alternative (additional) targets including this nation’s nuclear powerplants, especially those near major American cities. Think what the devastation might be if Fukushima-like nuclear waste were released and dispersed into the atmosphere, the water table, the earth itself, and if near the ocean, spreading damage with the currents and tides. A well-placed explosive device, a well-directed computer hack, an intentional terrorist meltdown, a hit from a targeting missile or a simply plane crash into a nuclear dome would be more than enough to give us a gift we would have thousands of years to forget.

But we seem to be preparing to release ultra-toxic nuclear waste – the stuff left over when a reactor has pretty much expended the radiation needed to power the plant at efficient levels… and the waste that remains remain potent but insufficient to generate electricity cost-effectively – into our immediate environment in increasingly dangerously stupid ways because (a) we don’t want to spend the money to do it right (we need those tax cuts for the rich, after all!) and (b) nobody wants that waste disposal in their ‘hood (NIMBY).

With the nuclear fuel, isotopes of uranium and plutonium, many with half-lives of hundreds or even thousands or tens of thousands of years (meaning toxic contaminants remain a very, very, very long time), the risks to surrounding areas are often incalculable. Chernobyl and Fukushima, home to two huge meltdowns. are still heavily-guarded facilities entirely too toxic for humans to enter without heavily protective hazard suits.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation sit north of the Columbia River in eastern Washington State, near the Oregon and Idaho borders. The reactor has shut down, but there are tons of containers of nuclear waste that have slowly been eroding and leaking into the soil and the ground water below. Effectively, the reactors have left 56 million gallons of nuclear waste, and thousands of gallons of that waste has leaked out of what were supposed to be 177 underground temporary containers… that we allowed to sit well-beyond their useful life. Waste in those eroding containers also had to be transferred to new, stronger containers with double linings.

The Department of Energy was forced to build a waste treatment facility to remove toxic soil and clean it. The overall effort (which will continue for years) is estimated to cost over $110 billion. Back in 2016 (in the May 3^rd issue), Newsweek reported exactly how dangerous Hanford was and continues to be to this very day: “Of the 28 newer double-shelled tanks, AY-102 was already known to be leaking toxic sludge into the soil. Now a second double-shelled tank, AY-101, is believed to be leaking as well, according to a report by Seattle news station KING 5. A contractor’s memo obtained by the station acknowledges ‘the possibility that the material is from tank waste that has escaped from the primary shell of the double-shell tank.’ That material likely includes radioactive isotopes like cesium-137 and strontium-90, though nobody really knows the exact composition of the sludge in each tank. But everyone is certain that their escape bodes poorly for the thousands who live and work in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state.

“Those worries were further compounded late last week [late April 20167] when 11 workers at Hanford became ill due to vapors emanating from AY-102, the leaking double-shelled tank.” Simply put, Hanford is an remains a very dangerous site, not only for the toxicity on the site but for what leaking toxicity could mean for the water table and the nearby rivers and streams.

But this problem is not relegated to Hanford, Washington. With aging nuclear powerplants all over the U.S., many of them being taken permanently off line as fundamentally obsolete (a few get retrofitted, but that is increasingly too expensive), the growing risks to nearby populations is rising every day. For folks living in heavily-populated Southern California, the news is not particularly good either.

The August 15^th Los Angeles Times gives us the bad news: “Southern California Edison is keeping 3.6 million pounds of lethal radioactive waste at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant in San Clemente [an oceanside location between Los Angeles and San Diego] … The waste poses a significant threat to the health, safety and economic vitality of the region’s more than 8 million residents. But Edison’s plan for storing it is unnerving at best.

“The idea is to bury the spent fuel on site, about 100 feet from the ocean and just a few feet above the water table. Edison has already begun transferring the waste from cooling pools into specially designed steel canisters. The containers are prone to corrosion and cracking, and cannot be monitored or repaired. Work crews even discovered a loose bolt inside one of the canisters earlier this year.

“But flawed storage containers are just one of many worrisome aspects of the scheme. San Onofre sits on an active earthquake fault, in an area where there is a record of past tsunamis. It is close to Interstate 5, the railroad line that Amtrak runs on, and the Marines’ Camp Pendleton.

“The ocean is expected to keep rising over the next few decades, bringing seawater closer to the canisters. If hairline cracks or pinholes in the containers were to allow in even a little bit of air, it could make the waste explosive… And although San Onofre is in a no-fly zone, it is not being guarded with radar and surface-to-air-missiles, as nuclear aircraft carriers are. It is protected by a handful of guards carrying pistols.

“This leaves the site susceptible to terrorist attacks. San Juan Capistrano Councilwoman Pam Patterson warned President Trump of this vulnerability at a roundtable meeting in May. She reminded him that, in 2001, terrorists were targeting nuclear power plants in addition to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” Shrug!

Improper storage of expended contaminants. Failing containment structures and worn-out operational parts. Inappropriate, high-risk locations susceptible to inevitable natural disasters. Truly outdated designs and construction practices from a much earlier era. We don’t need terrorists to bring toxic materials into the United States. It’s already here and ready to be plundered into the atmosphere in any number of reasonably possible ways.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as I have never seen it before, common sense seems to have completely left the government “building.”