Plan to ship Hanford leaked waste to WIPP decried

"This is a bad, old idea that's been uniformly rejected on a bipartisan basis by politicians when it came up in the past, and it's been strongly opposed by citizen groups like mine and others," said Don Hancock, a member of the watchdog group Southwest Research and Information in Albuquerque. "It's also clear that it's illegal." Hancock was commenting on federal plans to ship some of the radioactive waste from Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reserve to New Mexico, a plan supported by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D). Both states will need to approve the plan. Six of the Hanford tanks holding radioactive sludge from nuclear weapons production have been found to be leaking intro groundwater. The plan would mean shipping 3 million gallons of radioactive waste from Hanford to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.

LANL Six will get to volunteer for organizations they support; judge

On Wednesday, January 9, 2013, 6 anti-nuclear activists, arrested during a peaceful Hiroshima-Day protest at the gates of Las Alamos National Laboratory on August 6, 2012, went to trial before Judge Alan Kirk in Los Alamos Municipal Court.

The defendants spoke passionately about US commitments under The 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and decisions of the International Court of Justice as well as for the need to expend resources to confront climate change, the real and immediate threat to national security, not to expand the dangerous and archaic nuclear arsenal.  

In his decision, Judge Kirk found the 6 guilty of obstructing movement and refusing to obey an officer and not guilty of trespass.  Judge Kirk levied fines of $100 each for the two guilty charges. He also sentenced the LANL 6 to one year’s probation and charged each $142 in court fees. 

The Defendants then Petitioned the Court  to allow them to do community service or jail time rather than pay fines or costs to Los Alamos County.  On Feb. 7, Judge Kirk granted the defendants’ Motion to do twenty hours of community service at not-for-profits they selected in their local community, subject to the Court’s approval, but he denied their Motion to do time instead or to do community service for the court costs.

Jeffrey Haas, attorney for the LANL 6, said "It was as a result of the defendant’s strong principles that Judge Kirk allowed them to convert their fines to community service with organizations with whom they had political agreement in their own communities. A good precedent." 

Though the LANL 6 had different reasons for standing firm on Hiroshima Day, they are united in their demands that the US divert spending from nuclear weapons to cleaning up the environment and beginning the work to reverse global warming. All stated that it was more important to get out their message than the municipal ordinances they were accused of violating. In his closing argument, Attorney Haas said it was crazy to keep producing hazardous, dangerous, and useless nuclear weapons in an era when the real national security threat was catastrophic climate change, which the US ignores to its peril. 

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. "