Nuclear mattersGAO strongly criticizes DoE over Hanford clean-up

One of “the most contaminated places on Earth” will only get dirtier if the U.S. government does not get its act together — clean-up plans are already nineteen years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050. More than 210 million liters of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are more than fifty years old. Already sixty-seven of the tanks have failed, leaking almost four million litres of waste into the ground. There are now “serious questions about the tanks’ long-term viability,” says a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which strongly criticizes the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) for delaying an $8 billion program to empty the tanks and treat the waste. The DoE says the clean-up is “technically challenging” and argues that it is making progress in such a way as to protect human health and the environment.

The DoE’s plan, however, is “faith-based,” Robert Alvarez, an authority on Hanford at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. D.C., told New Scientist. “The risk of catastrophic tank failure will sharply increase as each year goes by,” he says, “and one of the nation’s largest rivers, the Columbia, will be in jeopardy.”