IMPORTED WASTE WOULD INCREASE CONTAMINATION IN HANFORD GROUNDWATER
Annette Cary of the Tri-City Herald reported Tuesday on the devastating environmental impacts of making Hanford a national Radioactive Waste Dump - a drum Heart of America Northwest has been beating ever since the draft Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was released in October 2009. And it's absolutely correct - the U.S. Department of Energy's own analysis shows that importing more waste to Hanford will cause perpetual groundwater contamination for thousands of years.
Here's a graphic from the EIS itself, reproduced in a recent Oregonian article, showing the spread of Iodine-129 in the groundwater at Hanford over the next 1,500 years:
For more resources on the EIS & the dates of the 4 remaining public hearings (La Grande, Spokane, Eugene & Seattle), visit www.hoanw.org.
It seems that logic is not a valued ideal of the federal government. With this new information, is it logical that the USDOE transport nuclear waste to the site decades before it will be clean? No. Is that stopping the government or causing any dilemma in their proposed plan? It would appear not.
ReplyDeleteYes, unfortunately, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) doesn't require agencies to choose the most logical and/or environmentally sound alternative when they are considering how to conduct cleanup at sites like Hanford. This is why the public really has to stand up at these hearings and let the government know what's up, and that the public does in fact want a cleanup plan that is protective of human health and the environment.
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