Truth about Hanford leaks comes too late

Leaks from radioactive waste tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation could amount to as much as 1,000 gallons a year. The radioactive effluent threatens ground water and the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Hanford has 177 aging tanks that store millions of gallons of radioactive sludge. The federal government built the Hanford facility in south-central Washington at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Now the tanks at Hanford hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste.

 Writes Hanford Watch president, Paige Knight, about recent revelations regarding multiple radioactive leaks from the tanks at the Hanford Nuclear facility:

"This latest news of the increase in Hanford Tank leaks is highly disturbing. In my 20 years of working on Hanford cleanup issue this is not the first time that the truth has come out too late. DOE and its contractors have in the past fabricated or downplayed the data about leaks from the tanks to the environment.Their negligence in assessing the data is an ongoing problem through the last 2 + decades of the cleanup program through different leaders in the agency. I believe we really have to look at the lack of intentional and conscientious oversight of the contractors and labs that test the tanks. This issue demands that DOE and  Congress appropriate money for building new tanks to contain the waste while DOE finds its way to get the Waste Treatment Plant back on track, if that is possible. We CANNOT fail to treat millions of gallons of radioactive waste sitting in failing underground tanks, no matter if they sit far from the Columbia River, the life blood of the Pacific Northwest or the five miles from the river as they truly do. The contractors and the DOE have created a cash cow that sucks the taxpayers dry. It is time for this mentality and practice to change and for the government and we, the people, to demand a moral and physical resolution to cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Safe storage and treatment of nuclear waste is tantamount to protecting our waterways, our health, our economy and future generations. This will require an end to the production of nuclear waste. All nuclear reactors no matter how "small" will produce deadly waste. Cleanup is the price we pay and that we are owed by a nuclear weapons and nuclear power industry that has been uncontrolled. "