" Every nuclear power plant will radioactive garbage heap ..."

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Nuclear peril in Pacific, See pp. 8 - 9 16 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1987 A less ambitious cleanup job, which would leave the soil-bound waste where it is while trucking the tank waste to a deep repository, would cost about $17 billion. Even a minimal cleanup, leaving the older waste where it sits in tanks and "stabilizing" it underground, would cost $2 billion to $3 billion.

In a briefing last March, White stated that the "DOE does not consider total cleanup to be reasonable because its cost is well above the agricultural value of the land and costs of all other reasonable alternatives."

Was the problem "solved?"

The disposal of liquid radioactive wastes has been a problem at the Hanford Military Reservation from the very beginning of its operations. In 1950, only five years after its start-up, the volume of moderately radioactive liquids was already so great that The article above is based in large part on an article that appeared in Science magazine (June 26, 1987) titled, "Hanford's Radioactive Tumbleweed." dumping had "objectionable unevaluated features."

Leaking tanks

Then, in the early sixties, Hanford began having trouble with its tanks. Between 1944 and 1964, 149 single-walled steel and concrete tanks were built to contain high-level waste. Within 10 years they began to corrode and leak.

According to a 1983 report, at least 26 tanks are "confirmed leakers" and over 30 are "of questionable integrity." In 1956, one tank leaked 55,000 gallons of high-level waste.

In 1973, a tank sprang a leak which went undetected until it had spilled 115,000 gallons of waste containing 40,000 curies of cesium-137, 14,000 curies of strontiumcompared to the thousands of years that radioactive waste must be kept isolated from our environment?

And this still doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the sludge and salt left in the old tanks; or what to do with the contaminated land; not to mention the effects of radiation exposure to Hanford's workers and community.

According to a report given to Congress in March, Hanford still dumps about 7 billion gallons of wastewater a year into cribs, ponds, and ditches.

Hanford is not alone The Hanford situation applies to any and all nuclear facilities worldwide. Every nuclear-power plant will eventually end up on the radioactive garbage heap because any According to Robert Alvarez, director of the Environmental Policy Institute's nuclear-power and weapons project, there are two reasons why the government is pushing to raise the permissible radiation levels:

First, if the U.S. occupational-exposure limit were dropped ten-fold, it would virtually wipe out the nuclear industry. And second, admitting that past standards were too weak would imply government liability for innumerable latent-radiation injuries among workers,. "atomic veterans," and citizens who live near nuclear facilities.

Nuclear-industry scientists and engineers urge us to have faith in their abilities and the inevitable advance of technology. But even technology cannot provide all the answers we need.

Even if unbreakable, corrosion-proof containers could be designed, any storage site would have to be kept under constant surveillance in a stable, warless society, and left undisturbed by earthquakes and other natural disasters for no less than half-a-million years. That is quite a tall order, which the nuclear industry cannot fill. •