Hanford sent some people to Seattle Monday March 8 to give a short presentation about some future plans and especially to collect public comment. I went to this hearing.
I am not sure that their web description of the event will exist forever, so here is the title and a list of the topics about which they want comment:
PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD ON THE DRAFT TANK CLOSURE AND WASTE MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT (TC&WM EIS)
Tank Closure
Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) Decommissioning
Waste Management
The “tank closure” issue seems to be that they have about 180 tanks holding on average 500,000 gallons of toxic waste. I cannot qualify the toxicity, but “proper toxic” is a description that I would use because I think is direct but vague and ominous enough to suffice. At least 50 of these tanks seem to have been leaking. The issue is that we made the bombs starting in the 40s and these were always intended to be temporary holding tanks used under pressure in wartime. As time passed some people wanted them left alone, but now it seems that because the leaking has been notable – at least millions of gallons – someone ought to consider doing something. The tanks are underground, and it is under consideration to either pump them and put the waste in new tanks, or dig up the tanks themselves, or dig up the tanks and the dirt underneath them, or just put a lid over everything to limit the water that would rain over the area and cause the waste to seep. I feel I am being straightforward in this description, but it is not easy to understand Hanford’s official statements and I do not trust the environmental organizations not to be sensational on the basis of most of their information being written alongside emotional pleas.
I do not know what the fast flux decommissioning is.
The “waste management” issue seems to be that the federal government is considering the use of the Hanford site as a nuclear waste dump for waste already at other sites and new waste generated by new weapons production. There are a lot of issues here, but the controversial one is that Hanford is a beautiful place near a river that flows into Oregon, and thus any waste that leaks into the ground and hits the water table will integrate into the river and travel. The story is that when Hanford was chosen as a site at which to produce plutonium it was chosen because the factories needed lots of water. Now that the site is already contaminated it seems right to some people to continue to use it as a dump rather than to contaminate some new place that is not radioactive. But anyone who was choosing a new place to store waste probably would not choose a plateau on commercial road and rail lines (means good real estate) that is near a major river.
The day before the hearing I went to a presentation at the Hugo House put on by Heart of American Northwest and the Hanford Challenge, which are two non-profiti organizations that are devoted to Hanford activism. I appreciate the concern these organizations have and their intent to do right, but I can hardly say that the content of their presentation was what I wanted. There is a need for someone to get concerned people together and get them excited and tell them how to give a certain kind of comment at the hearing, but what I really wanted was the information that I needed to be able to understand the issues, the options, and the potential results of various courses of action. Those two organizations seemed only interested in an attempt of total cleanup of the Hanford Site and prohibition of import of any new waste to the site, even if that new waste was well-processed. They did not make it clear whether the representatives from Hanford were seeking public comment as to whether those were even options, but my understanding is that total cleanup and the import ban were not options that were being considered.
Leaving aside the content of the presentation at the Hugo House, the presentation itself was excellent. They had an improv acting troupe there and a comic mural artist. There was a host at the event who would introduce each speaker. Then between speakers the improv troupe would do educational comic relief based on audience cues. Each speaker spoke only for a few minutes, so the pace was fast, no topic went deep, and everyone had fun. Throughout all this the mural artist was recreating the big points of the talks on the wall with pictorial representations, so anyone who was bored listening to a particular speaker could look to the huge poster on the wall and see a good artist make quick sketches.
At the hearing the next day there was a Hanford employee, some Department of Ecology guy who works with Hanford (which is managed by the Department of Energy), and then one of the guys from Heart of America was there also to present a community perspective. Hanford had mass posters and explanations of the proposes all over the lecture room. I had tried to read about the proposal before going, plus I had been to the Hugo House the day before, plus I had studied Hanford a little the year before when I had gone there to tour the cleanup. Also here and there I try to read something about Hanford. I got there early, read the posters, talked to people there, and then I tried to listen attentively to the presentations.
An understanding of even the nature of the proposal was beyond my intellect based on the amount of preparation that I had. The Hanford employee and the DoE guy spoke in total jargon and assumed much more background than what I had. I could not understand what they were considering much less formulate a meaningful opinion. After they spoke Heart of America spoke for a few minutes, and they again told people that we should demand total cleanup and the ban.
Whatever happened at that hearing was not a dialogue between people discussing the same topic. About 50 people spoke for about two minutes each, and almost everyone there said that Hanford should be cleaned entirely and that waste import should be banned. Some people talked about the effects of radiation overdose or about the dangers of nuclear war. One person said that he would support nuclear power if America could ever prove that it could clean the waste safely, but then said that Hanford demonstrates a failure to safely dispose of waste. When it was my turn to speak I said that I did not have enough information to be able to give an opinion on the issue because I could not understand what the issue was or what kind of comments they wanted. I told them that I could not understand anything they said, and that I could not understand their posters, and that their website was also bad. I told them that I did not think it was fair for them to ask for opinions without explaining the issue in laymens terms. I told them that I had a chemistry degree and that even though I am not a radiochemist and do not work in a related field, I still ought to be better able to understand than most people and still I am totally lost. I advised them to make everything comprehensible on a high-school level. To close, I complimented them for having a good YouTube account because at least is shows that they have a videographer that is trying to make media that is accessible by normal people. I also encouraged them to continue to post information to social networking sites.
Here on this blog, I want to say something about how I would make a decision if I had more information. One of the choices that I did pick out was that Hanford wanted to make a decision about doing a 90%, a 99%, or a 99.9% cleanup. As I said, unanimously among commenters who stated an opinion, the demand was for 100% cleanup. I think Hanford’s own scientists recommendation was 99% cleanup, whatever that means, and they wanted 110 billion dollars and 100 years to do it. The scale of this is beyond what humanity has ever attempted before, and it is not clear to me what success is likely.
I think that a pessimist who was reasonable might say that even with a maximal budget that pushes the limit of what it is possible to spend, it might still be the case that in 100 years the area is still completely unfit for human life, plus the river will be toxified, so the area would still be on track to contaminate all land within say 20 miles of the Columbia river as it runs its long course. Perhaps entire cities would need to be abandoned, and perhaps even in the best case there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. I am not sure if this is possible or not, but I am saying that if i heard someone say this I would not have enough information to say that they must be wrong. If this is the case, then I am not sure that our efforts are best spent on cleanup, and maybe we ought to just plan to abandon a few thousand square kilometers of land for a few thousand years, and tell it to the public like it is.
I think an optimist who is reasonable would say that there is going to be a certain amount of toxicity in the area no matter what we do, and total cleanup or reversion to a natural state is impossible under any circumstances. I do not know what a reasonable optimistic prediction is, but I am saying that I believe that people who say total cleanup is possible are politically and emotionally deluded. The people at Hanford Challenge and Heart of America are good people, but I cannot take them seriously because in my mind they take for granted that this problem has a good solution.
I have no idea what ought to be done or how one might be able to make a decision on any issue related to Hanford, or how one might gain information necessary to be able to make a decision.