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Tunnel at plutonium uranium extraction plant collapses in Hanford

Kurmugeon said:
What's going on at that facility is considerably MORE dangerous that the standard operations of a Nuclear Reactor.

And far, far larger amounts of radioactive Ur, Pu, and other materials are envolved. 20X+ as much.


I can only think of two U.S. facilities which are more dangerous.

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Far larger amounts are present at the facility. Not "involved."

The materials aren't all sitting in a giant pile, dude. They can't get up, walk through the facility, and gather together to form a chain reaction.
 
joG said:
We shall see.
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Honestly, I hope we never see anything about Hanford again, because it turns out this was some small, fluke error, problem, that goes nowhere.

It would definitely be for the best.

If it does turn out to be something of import, I hope that we are told the TRUTH, within the limits of good site security, about what truly happened.

I hope the Lab learns a lesson from the event, and other Labs do as well, and overall safety gets better.

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Deuce said:
Far larger amounts are present at the facility. Not "involved."

The materials aren't all sitting in a giant pile, dude. They can't get up, walk through the facility, and gather together to form a chain reaction.
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I won't comment on the structure of the facility or the processes.

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This is just one of many problems at the site. Its proximity to the Columbia River is frightening.

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Kurmugeon said:
No... we're not sure...

That's the point.


If this were a Cobalt 60 Source being Milked to produce medical isotopes, this couldn't get very bad.

The facility does something which I cannot go into the technical details on, but the facility has the potential to get quite bad, if this is bigger than we are being told.

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It's a radioactive waste container. Not a nuclear reactor meltdown.
 
Kurmugeon said:
Would you rather go back to the days when we didn't have an ebola victim contact requirement for quarantine?

Do you remember the episode of Dr. Spencer blowing bloody ebola diherra in bathrooms of restraunts in a major U.S. City?

Do you have any clue how lucky we got?

You think because an American Pandemic Didn't happen, that proves there was no danger?

Do you THINK at all?

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How can we possibly remember when we all died?
 
Kurmugeon said:
And far, far larger amounts of radioactive Ur, Pu, and other materials are envolved. 20X+ as much.



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What is "Ur"?

Someplace in Mesopotamia?
 
The tunnel obviously collapsed because Trump is Nixonian and.... Watergate. And Russia. Duh.
 
poweRob said:
How can we possibly remember when we all died?
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In the endevor of preventing pandemics, this answer is utter stupidity.

Even the CDC admits now that we were taking huge, un-needed, politically driven, unacceptable risks in not insisting on the common sense measure of having Health Care workers, returning from direct contact with Ebola victims, undergo a two week quarantine.

http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/17/new-us-ebola-czar-as-who-admits-dropping-ball-on-epidemic.html

Today, it is SOP.


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poweRob said:
It's a radioactive waste container. Not a nuclear reactor meltdown.
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Wrong!

We do NOT know what it was... other than the description of a tunnel collapse occuring, in tunnels which held railways for the intra-site transport of Nuclear fuel rods, and the post-processing wastes and enriched Pu.

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Thank you Kurmugeon for posting this info. I hope this handled safely and carefully and there are no people hurt and no radiation leaks.

Just a side note , my Mom's sister worked at the Handford plant on the Manhatten project ( building the atom bomb ) during World War II.

Here is a small snip from Wiki about the plant.


Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project in Hanford, [/]south-central Washington, the site was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world.[1] Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.
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Top Cat said:
This is just one of many problems at the site. Its proximity to the Columbia River is frightening.

View attachment 67217377
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The site was chosen, and went into operation before the bombings in Japan. We knew next to nothing about the hazards of fallout and contaimination at the time the site was chosen.

We have to commit some fairly large resources to the clean up of Hanford, and the existing, leaking, radioactive waste tanks.

We probably should chose a new site, somewhere out in a desert, in a location with an closed water-shed, and little ground water movement, to create a new Pu enrichment facility.

But! We cannot completely de-commision the current site, until the new one is operating, lest we lose the deterent which keeps wacko nations like N.Korea in check.

Its is huge mess, to be sure.

It will be vastly expensive to fix.

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Kurmugeon said:
Wrong!

We do NOT know what it was... other than the description of a tunnel collapse occuring, in tunnels which held railways for the intra-site transport of Nuclear fuel rods, and the post-processing wastes and enriched Pu.

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You posted an article saying what it was. If you don't believe your own article... then take it up with yourself.
 
On the Ebola and CDC thang:

https://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog...aphic-about-droplet-and-doorknob-transmission

Election Time Ebola Reality Check: CDC Admits Droplet and Doorknob Transmission
By stephanie | Saturday, October 25, 2014 at 3:00 pm


ebola-cdc.jpg

That's right. Ebola can be transmitted by sneezes and doorknobs.

I simply don't get the people who are downplaying Ebola. On the one side, we have fringe conspiracy theorists who charge that the Satanic sociopaths in charge want to depopulate the planet, yet are faking the Ebola threat for some bizarre reason. On the other, we have what appear to be Democratic operatives flooding news comment sections making fun of anyone who is concerned about Ebola. (Never mind certain politicians!)

The fact that Governors Cuomo and Christie are now quarantining incoming high-risk travelers from Ebola countries in defiance of Obama tells me things are very serious.

How about we look at a very garden-variety conspiracy theory along with basic human nature? I charge:

1) Ebola caught the Obama administration with their pants down.
2) They cannot limit travel without acknowledging that the Southern border needs to be closed.
3) They need illegal votes to win.
4) They are filled with hubris and arrogance.

Please don't try to tell me that Cuomo and Christie are in on some plot to implement martial law. If that were the agenda, Obama would have cracked down more himself already. No, the agenda is to win elections no matter what the cost. The "conspiracy" is to hide the extent of the Ebola threat for political reasons.

Don't get me wrong. I am concerned when mandatory quarantines for incoming travelers are implemented, but given that Ebola is very dangerous, and even medical professionals are being very cavalier about self-quarantine, what choice do we have? Would it lead to more freedom if we just let high-risk people run amok and start a pandemic? There is no liberty in death.

What really boggles the mind are the fringe conspiracy theorists posting "EBOLA IS A HOAX!!" YouTube videos where they make fun of people dying in Africa while giggling maniacally like a pedophile serial killer. Claiming that little boys dying in the street are "crisis actors," or men with their pants off due to explosive diarrhea are faking it, makes you look like a callous idiot. At the same time, you claim the Powers That Be are trying to kill everyone...by faking an outbreak. I don't know if you are just plain stupid, crazy, or a disinfo agent, but get a grip on reality.

I've also seen a lot of smarmy commenters claiming that hysteria over Ebola is more dangerous than Ebola itself. Really? How about denying reality due to your normalcy bias is dangerous? Or living in a fantasy world where no news is actually ...
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When it comes to nuclear meltdowns, or pandemics, the cost of being "Not Conservative Enough" is .... Un-acceptable.

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vanceen said:
What is "Ur"?

Someplace in Mesopotamia?
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It is a clear way of communicating on a political forum to an audience who likely does not know the offical symbols of the table of elements.

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Kurmugeon said:
I won't comment on the structure of the facility or the processes.

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Probably because that ruins your whole freak out session.
 
Kurmugeon said:
Would you rather go back to the days when we didn't have an ebola victim contact requirement for quarantine?

Do you remember the episode of Dr. Spencer blowing bloody ebola diherra in bathrooms of restraunts in a major U.S. City?

Do you have any clue how lucky we got?

You think because an American Pandemic Didn't happen, that proves there was no danger?

Do you THINK at all?

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Of course there was a "danger" but we are a first world country with modern hospitals, health system, a functioning CDC, and more and every expert on pandemics and ebola kept saying over and over that there was an approximately 0% chance of a major pandemic. The fear then about a major outbreak was totally irrational, driven by craven politicians stoking fear for political gain (and media outlets desperate for a good story that generated millions of clicks) which we know because post election, with really no change in the RISK, the coverage virtually evaporated.

EbolaCoverageChart.jpg
 
Here is an update on Hanford Tunnel collapse story:

Hanford collapse: State orders federal government to determine cause | KING5.com

In a 2005 report, a commission studying the problems at the site projected that the tunnel would collapse in about 30 years, or 2045. Well, it happened just 7 years later.

Additionally, the above web site video has footage of the gapping hole in the ground, which took 50 dump trucks of earth to fill in.

Note, they are not even attempting in slightest to clean up the mess down in the tunnel, they're just burying it! That doesn't keep the contaiminents, likely now in holed drums, from seeping down into the ground water, and making its way to the nearby river.

So, the State Government is sueing the Federal Government to determine the exact cause of the Tunnel Collapse.

There is little doubt that the Lawyers will make allot of money over this...

But that will do little to actually clean up the site, or fix the potential hazzards.

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Kurmugeon said:
Here is an update on Hanford Tunnel collapse story:

Hanford collapse: State orders federal government to determine cause | KING5.com

In a 2005 report, a commission studying the problems at the site projected that the tunnel would collapse in about 30 years, or 2045. Well, it happened just 7 years later.

Additionally, the above web site video has footage of the gapping hole in the ground, which took 50 dump trucks of earth to fill in.

Note, they are not even attempting in slightest to clean up the mess down in the tunnel, they're just burying it! That doesn't keep the contaiminents, likely now in holed drums, from seeping down into the ground water, and making its way to the nearby river.

So, the State Government is sueing the Federal Government to determine the exact cause of the Tunnel Collapse.

There is little doubt that the Lawyers will make allot of money over this...

But that will do little to actually clean up the site, or fix the potential hazzards.

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Thanks for the update.
 
Kurmugeon said:
Here is an update on Hanford Tunnel collapse story:

Hanford collapse: State orders federal government to determine cause | KING5.com

In a 2005 report, a commission studying the problems at the site projected that the tunnel would collapse in about 30 years, or 2045. Well, it happened just 7 years later.

Additionally, the above web site video has footage of the gapping hole in the ground, which took 50 dump trucks of earth to fill in.

Note, they are not even attempting in slightest to clean up the mess down in the tunnel, they're just burying it! That doesn't keep the contaiminents, likely now in holed drums, from seeping down into the ground water, and making its way to the nearby river.

So, the State Government is sueing the Federal Government to determine the exact cause of the Tunnel Collapse.

There is little doubt that the Lawyers will make allot of money over this...

But that will do little to actually clean up the site, or fix the potential hazzards.

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What makes you think there's plutonium in the tunnel?
 
Deuce said:
What makes you think there's plutonium in the tunnel?
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Where did I say I believe there is Plutonium in the tunnel?

Certainly NOT in what you quoted.

The referenced story makes it clear that there are radiactive wastes and contaminated tools, namely, flatbed rail cars, stored in the tunnel.

They have not specified what the contaiminates are. They could be Plutonium, but it is unlikely. Plutonium is too damn rare and valuable not to gather for use.

Trans-Plutonium and Trans-Uranium decay products are likely.

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Kurmugeon said:
Where did I say I believe there is Plutonium in the tunnel?

Certainly NOT in what you quoted.

The referenced story makes it clear that there are radiactive wastes and contaminated tools, namely, flatbed rail cars, stored in the tunnel.

They have not specified what the contaiminates are. They could be Plutonium, but it is unlikely. Plutonium is too damn rare and valuable not to gather for use.

Trans-Plutonium and Trans-Uranium decay products are likely.

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You kept talking about plutonium earlier.
 
Deuce said:
You kept talking about plutonium earlier.
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Reading is Fundemental.

Where Plutonium and Uranium are being processed, their radioactive decay by products are usually found as wastes from the refinement processes.

It depends on the information found in the Table of Radioactive Nuclides, which is similar to a Periodic Table, but contains the isotopes, their breakdown pathways, half-lives, production probabilities and photon energy releases.

Table of Nuclides


In the case of Uranium:
Transuranium Elements - Definition, List & Properties | [email]Chemistry@TutorVista.com[/email]

TransUranium.jpg

When an escaping neutron strikes another Uranium atom, it sometimes forms a TransUranium Isotope. It depends on allot of factors, including how energetic the Neutron is, or how fast it is moving, if it hits squarely, or only a glancing blow, and the stability of the nucleus struck. If everything is just right, you get an new, high Z, or atom number, Isotope.

Lower atomic number elements can also become "Upgraded" in atomic number, but it considerably less likely, due to the smaller nuclear cross section, lower stability, and much lower neutron energy requirement. Only when the neutrons are deliberately slowed, or moderated, but not absorbed, does it happen in large quantity. There is a entire branch of nuclear science dedicated to designing systems to produce particular lower Z Isotopes.

Some of those elements have very short half-lives themselves, so you'll also find the decay products of the second generation decay... and a few of the third, etc.

Radioactive waste is NEVER comprised of a single element, and it doesn't stay fixed in composition, but is constantly changing.

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