When the Storage at a Nuclear Facility Fails, Whose Fault is It

© Jeff T. Green / Getty Images North America / AFP

The US Department of Energy has declared an emergency at the Hanford, Washington nuclear waste storage site, after a cave-in of a tunnel used to store radioactive materials and equipment.

About 3,000 workers have taken cover at the 200 East Area of the sprawling complex, local media reported. By 10:30 am local time, the “take cover” orders have been expanded to the entire site, which is about half the size of Rhode Island.

RT:  Emergency declared at US Hanford nuclear waste site after tunnel collapse


The story gets better since there is an excellent nuclear storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. (WIKI:  Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository)

This is a proper facility which was prepared by the Federal government specifically for stable, long-term containment of nuclear waste products.  It is no longer used.

A tour group entering the North Portal of Yucca Mountain


The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 mi (130 km) northwest of the Las Vegas Valley.

The project was approved in 2002 by the United States Congress, but Federal funding for the site ended in 2011 under the Obama Administration via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011. The project has had many difficulties and was highly contested by the general public, the Western Shoshone peoples, and many politicians. The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons.

- WIKI

Ed:  ah, it was Obama's fault then because he canceled it

Don't be so Sean Hannity, Dagwood.  Nothing is ever so simple.


The only way to move the nuclear waste products safely and in large quantity from nuclear facilities such as Hanford, it was necessary to transport the waste material on trains.  Those trains were blacked, banned, or hamstrung by ever misguided mainstream neoliberal on planet Earth.  Those efforts did nothing to inhibit the production of nuclear power, particularly after the plants were already in existence, so they did the next best thing and stored the nuclear waste material on-site.

We see today how well that worked out.


That effort was much like the way Republicans deal with climate change ... since they don't.  There was speculation today regarding Donald Trump's honoring of the Paris climate change accords but that's ludicrous after he has said already climate change is a plot and he's already unleashed coal-produced power again.


In England, they're just starting to show recovery from the acid rain which comes from coal-produced power.  (Phys.org:  Stream bugs suggest pollution recovery in North York Moors)

A surprising diversity of bugs recorded in upland streams in northern England may indicate a recovery from past acid pollution, according to scientists at the University of York.

Surveying 16 stream catchments in the North York Moors National Park – historically one of the worst acid water pollution sites in the UK – researchers found a higher diversity of invertebrates than expected and faunas indicative of unpolluted waters.

- PO

That indifference to the consequences of what they do differs little from the result of the protests against the trains carrying the nuclear waste and we see from today why that is true.  They decisively made the problem worse.


Proof of the failure to prevent nuclear power in America is in Tennessee.  (Washington Post:   It’s the first new U.S. nuclear reactor in decades. And climate change has made that a very big deal.)