Nuclear waste tunnel collapse - Washington State, Hanford DOE waste storage facility

[Spartan5]

A tunnel reinforced with pressure treated timbers that has not been inspected in over 20 years due to the extreme levels of radioactivity from the contaminated materials stored within has collapsed. Whodathunkdit

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...r-waste-site-in-washington-state-reports-say/

 

[JohnRBaker]

Does that mean that the nuclear material is now more secure and perhaps even better shielded?

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[HamburgerHelper]

If I have a piece of clothing that is dry clean only, it will always be dirty. If something can't be inspected or receive maintenance, it will fail completely at some point. Makes you wonder if the plan from the start was just to let the tunnels collapse with all the material in it and then say that is how it is going to be because fixing the mess after that point would cost too much. Get the solution you want through intentional failure. Sounds almost like how dams only get project funding when something fails so something has to fail to get project funding.

 

[dgallup]

Doesn't seem like much of a tunnel to me:

The cave-in was discovered during “routine surveillance,” according to the Energy Department. Photographs showed a gaping hole, plainly evident because the tunnels are largely above ground.

Hard to believe they are just scraping by on $2.3 Billion a year.

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[dik]

I understand that some of the radiation products on Bikini Atoll have a half life of 22,000 years... it will be a bit of while before they can be inhabited... I don't know what products are stored or what plans, if any, have been made at the Hanford site.

I don't think those in charge had an inkling of what the consequences were at the time...

Dik

 

[dgallup]

Oh they knew, they just didn't care.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.

 

[itsmoked]

Gives you a warm feeling as you drive around the Hanford site that all the Rest Areas have environmental monitoring systems for radiation detection.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[ScottyUK]

A glowing warm sort of feeling ...?

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, I've driven around that area as well. And years ago, back in the mid-80's when they were still working on stuff there, I actually visited the Hanford Site on a sales call. We were trying to sell them some software and I accompanied our sales rep out of Seattle. I can't recall exactly which lab facility that we visited but I know that it was not one where any sort of manufacturing or processing was taking place. I do recall that it was just inside the gate and it was more of an engineering/office type building and we never left the conference room. Turned out that we didn't have what they were looking for. As I recall, they were looking for some analysis software to predict the flow of molten metal and we didn't really have anything like that back-then. I think in the end they contracted something out to a university. All I remember is that we never went back.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[BigInch]

itsmoked, not to worry. Monitor's surroundings are cleaned of all radioactivity on a regular basis. Park within 10ft.

Technology is stealing American jobs. Stop H1-Bs for robots.

 

[itsmoked]

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[dgallup]

This Physics Today article has a little more info.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.