Area around Hanford site at risk of contamination
Underground tanks holding radioactive waste at a US nuclear site are at risk of exploding say officials.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has expressed increasing concern about the situation and has requested additional monitoring and ventilation of the tanks.
The board has highlighted those concerns to Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
State and federal officials at Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation have long known about the potentially explosive hydrogen gas build up at America’s most contaminated site, according to US media reports.
Federal officials have said six underground tanks at the site are leaking into the soil, threatening the groundwater, and technical problems have delayed construction of a plant to treat the waste for long-term safe disposal.
The US government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.
No comments yet