*
*
Communities along Washington state’s Columbia River could be wiped out because of a leak in a massive nuclear waste storage tank at the Hanford Nuclear Waste Storage Site in Richland, Washington. (Bye-bye Longview, Kelso, Vancouver and Portland).The mess on the Hanford nuclear reservation has been an on-going scandal ever since I first moved to Washington State in 1982. The bottom line is the federal government keeps stonewalling on replacing or cleaning up underground liquid waste containers that were built in the 40s and 50s and only meant to last 20 years.
Communities along Washington state’s Columbia River could be wiped out because of a leak in a massive nuclear waste storage tank at the Hanford Nuclear Waste Storage Site in Richland, Washington.
Leak detectors sounded early Sunday morning and crews at Hanford lowered a camera into the two-foot-wide space between the tank’s inner and outer walls. They discovered 8.4 inches of radioactive and chemically toxic waste had leaked and was continuing to leak. These tanks can hold upwards of one million gallons each!
“This is catastrophic. This is probably the biggest event to ever happen in tank farm history. The double shell tanks were supposed to hold waste safely from people and the environment,” said former Hanford worker Mike Geffre. The graphic below shows the problems now faced by the people in Washington state (Click image to enlarge):
Communities Below Could…
View original post 550 more words
The Most Revolutionary Act 
“Where Safety Comes First,” on that sign is ludicrous and quite obviously, meaningless since it is quite apparent that no money was spent on any assurances that safety would be of utmost importance.
What ‘refreshing’ news on this day of all days, ‘Earth Day’!
Thanks Dr. Bramhall.
LikeLike
Really gut wrenching, isn’t it? It appears we are all to be systematically poisoned one way or another. My daughter and grandson live in Portland and I really worry for them. Although New Zealand has its own problems, one think I like about living here is that it’s 100% nuclear free by statute. We won’t even allow US war ships in our harbor.
My biggest wish is that I can eventually persuade the rest of my family to move here.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“My biggest wish is that I can eventually persuade the rest of my family to move here.”
Continue to send them posts such as this one and after receiving so many, they should soon be convinced. I know I would!
You can but try, Dr. Bramhall, and from where I’m sitting, you are certainly doing your utmost to get the truth out there!
LikeLike
I think this is the tip of iceberg as we have no idea how to safely dispose nuclear waste businessinsider.com/r-us-budget-proposes-scrapping-plutonium-disposal-project-2016-2
LikeLike
From what I understand Sweden and Finland have collaborated to bury all their nuclear waste in a deep underground rock formation: https://stuartjeannebramhall.com/2014/02/17/horror-film-about-nuclear-waste/
LikeLike
Not a problem. As the radioactive contamination spreads downstream and exposure levels rise, what are legislated ‘safe levels of exposure’ will simply be raised, as they did in Fukushima prefecture.
And then if cancer rates rise and people begin to die younger than they should, you just don’t publish the mortality rates, and the public will never be the wiser.
From the graphic in the article, it would appear that the ‘disaster’ has been unfolding for some time already. But, as the industry would no doubt remind us, we are talking about extremely small amounts of radiation when spread out throughout the environment. Never mind that insignificant amounts even in relation to a person’s body mass can be deadly once the source of emissions, in the form of cesium or strontium or even a single ‘hot particle,’ is assimilated as ‘potasium’ or ‘calcium’ or just sits in a person’s lung as a single particle of micro dust.
For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of radiation toxicity, just follow these links to what Dr. Chris Busby has to say on the issue:
“Aspects of DNA Damage from Internal Radionuclides”
Click to access aspects-of-dna-damage.pdf
related links:
“The ICRP’s radiation risk model is bogus science”
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2596275/the_icrps_radiation_risk_model_is_bogus_science.html
And,
An archive of videos and scientific papers produced and written by Dr. Christopher Busby:
http://www.chris.busby.exposed/all-the-videos/
Dr. Christopher Busby believes that the current risk model used by the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) grossly understates and consequently ends up concealing from the public “. . . the true scale and nature of the health impacts of radiation . . .”
Yup, it’s a disaster, but of a kind that tends to go unnoticed because it unfolds only incrementally and over decades, lifetimes, and generations.
LikeLike
Wow, thanks for all the great links, Norman. As a former member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, I’m a great fan of Dr Helen Caldicott (who started PSR). She’s been trying to increase public awareness of the true dangers of nuclear radiation for more than 30 years now:
LikeLiked by 1 person
Listened to the video. Everybody should. Caldicott certainly gets it right on the need to eradicate the nuclear industry and the fact that radiation pollution is forever.
My only quibble is with her quirky political views, conflating, as she does, the categories of capitalism, communism and socialism. So either socio-political analysis is not her strong suit or she imagines she will have better odds of inciting her American audience to urgent action by smudging those three categories together.
But then the point of her lecture is to educate the public about the dangers of radiological pollution, which she certainly manages quite well. So my quibble is perhaps somewhat misplaced and unjustified.
I certainly can’t say that I don’t share both her outrage and incomprehension at the magnitude of the insanity that is the nuclear industry. This thing really has to be stopped. Unless people know about the dangers of radiation, that can’t possibly happen. Getting informed and informing others is something we can all do. And in this respect, it is easy to see that Caldicott’s work is an invaluable and authoritative reference.
LikeLike
You’re right, Norman. Caldicott knows absolutely nothing about politics. However she is extremely opinionated (about everything) and I myself get a bit irritated by this at times.
LikeLike
I’d ‘like’ the post – but that doesn’t seem appropriate. How much longer before we destroy Planet Earth?
LikeLike
I guess it’s not so much planetary destruction I fear as the gradual systematic poisoning from nuclear radiation and ubiquitous toxic chemicals.
LikeLike