Underground Nuclear Tanks Leaking in Washington State
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: February 22, 2013
SEATTLE — Six underground tanks holding radioactive waste are leaking at
the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee
said on Friday after a meeting with federal officials overseeing the
cleanup of the nation’s most polluted nuclear site.
One tank was already known to have a leak, but the new revelation caught
state officials by surprise, said David Postman, a spokesman for the
governor. He said that federal managers had assured the governor that
the leaks posed no health risks or threats to the water supply,
including the Columbia River, which passes nearby.
But Mr. Postman said it was also unclear how long the additional tanks
have been leaking. What federal officials called a “data analysis”
revealed the problem, Mr. Postman said. Hanford was built in the 1940s
for the Manhattan Project, then continued on for decades through the
cold war as a manufacturing site for the nuclear arsenal.
The Department of Energy, Mr. Inslee said in a statement, “did not
adequately analyze data it had that would have shown the other tanks
that are leaking.”
Political leaders in Washington State and Oregon were already on high
alert about Hanford as new worries about the site’s pollutants combined
with concerns about federal budgets, especially if automatic spending
cuts — the sequestration threat hanging over Congress — kick in,
affecting the cleanup budget.
The Department of Energy, which oversees the site, said last week that
one of the 177 tanks at the site was leaking radioactive waste liquids
at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons per year. The department said then that
the tank, which holds approximately 447,000 gallons of sludge, was the
first one documented to be losing liquids since interim stabilization of
Hanford’s tanks was completed in 2005.
Mr. Inslee, who took office last month, said after the first leak was
announced that he was “alarmed and deeply concerned.”
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