Texas Billionaire Builds Giant Nuclear Waste Dump
Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons has been called the king of Superfund
sites. His companies, like publicly traded NL Industries, have over the years
reportedly polluted numerous industrial sites with toxic metals and radiation.
And another of his companies, Waste Control Specialists, is in the business of
cleaning the messes up. It’s such a clever strategy that Dallas’ D Magazine in
an insightful profile last year, called 79-year-old Simmons Dallas’ “most evil
genius.“
For years WCS (a division of publicly traded Valhi) lobbied to open a
nuclear waste disposal site Andrews County of west Texas near the New Mexico
border. It’s dry, empty country. Oil fields provide most of the jobs. It took
Simmons some six years of lobbying to get the permits to open his nuclear dump
and start accepting what could ultimately be 60 million cubic feet of low-level
nuclear waste.
This is not the kind of waste that would have gone to the ill-fated Yucca
Mountain project in Nevada (i.e. spent fuel rods and such). But it’s pretty
harsh stuff nonetheless: the refuse from nuclear medical applications, weapons
programs, parts from old nuclear reactors. Already a worker at the site and a
septic system have reportedly been tainted by plutonium. Mother Jones magazine
published this piece on Simmons’ nuke dump earlier this week: “A Texas-Sized
Plan For Nuclear Waste.”
Now I don’t think there’s anything wrong with building and operating a well
regulated dump for low-level nuclear waste. After all, the stuff has got to go
somewhere and someone’s got to be responsible for it. But the Mother Jones
article raises some legitimate concerns.
Three staff members at the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality quit
their jobs after their concerns that the nuke dump could pollute ground water
with radiation were ignored. They believe that the uppermost layer of the
massive Ogallala Aquifer lay just 14 feet below the dump. And if not the
Ogallala, then it might be the Pecos Valley Aquifer. WCS has reportedly said
that any such concerns are unjustified, though the D Magazine article explains
that maps prepared by the Texas Water Development Board show that the areas
where the nuke dump is located … “is underlain by four aquifers. In addition to
the Dockum, there are three major aquifers: Ogallala (or High Plains), Pecos
Valley (or Cenozoic Pecos Alluvium), and Edwards-Trinity Plateau. The TWDB and
USGS websites both state that the Edwards-Trinity Plateau Aquifer is
hydraulically connected to four major aquifers, including the Ogallala, and
several minor aquifers, including the Dockum.”
More scientific concerns were voiced in this 2008 Texas Observer article
“Good to Glow.“ None of that, nor a history of accidental contaminations at the
site, nor outcry from environmental groups, stopped Texas’ Radioactive Waste
Disposal Compact Commission from voting to approve the import of nuclear waste
into Texas from other states. Six of the seven members of that commission were
appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who reportedly received $250,000 in campaign
cash from Simmons for the 2008 governor’s race.
Texas will reportedly receive $36 million a year for allowing the imports;
Simmons will get millions more for watching over them. Ultimate responsibility
if anything goes wrong falls on the state.
It just doesn’t look good. Like I said before, properly regulated nuclear
dumps are not terrible in and of themselves. But when politically tainted
commissions override the concerns of hydrologists willing to quit to make
themselves heard, it’s probably time for Texans to demand an independent
investigation of the true risks of Simmons’ nuke dump.
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The long-delayed cleanup of the nation's most
contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is
leaking.
FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Hanford Nuclear Tank Leaking Radioactive Waste
By SHANNON DININNY and MIKE BAKER 02/15/13 06:19 PM ET EST
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- The long-delayed cleanup of the nation's most
contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is
leaking.
The news raises concerns about the integrity of similar tanks at
south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation and puts added pressure
on the federal government to resolve construction problems with the plant being
built to alleviate environmental and safety risks from the waste.
The tanks, which are already long past their intended 20-year life span,
hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of
plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy said liquid levels are decreasing
in one of 177 underground tanks at the site. Monitoring wells near the tank have
not detected higher radiation levels, but Inslee said the leak could be in the
range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a
potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers.
"I am alarmed about this on many levels," Inslee said at a news conference.
"This raises concerns, not only about the existing leak ... but also concerning
the integrity of the other single shell tanks of this age."
Inslee said the state was assured years ago that such problems had been
dealt with and he warned that spending cuts – particularly due to a budget fight
in Congress – would create further risks at Hanford. Inslee said the cleanup
must be a priority for the federal government.
"We are willing to exercise our rights using the legal system at the
appropriate time. That should be clear," Inslee said.
Inslee said the state has a good partner in Energy Secretary Steven Chu but
that he's concerned about whether Congress is committed to clean up the highly
contaminated site.
The tank in question contains about 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture of
solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency. The tank, built in the 1940s, is
known to have leaked in the past, but was stabilized in 1995 when all liquids
that could be pumped out of it were removed.
Inslee said the tank is the first to have been documented to be losing
liquids since all Hanford tanks were stabilized in 2005. His staff said the
federal government is working to assess other tanks.
At the height of World War II, the federal government created Hanford in
the remote sagebrush of eastern Washington as part of a hush-hush project to
build the atomic bomb. The site ultimately produced plutonium for the world's
first atomic blast and for one of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, effectively
ending the war.
Plutonium production continued there through the Cold War. Today, Hanford
is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup will cost billions of
dollars and last decades.
Central to that cleanup is the removal of millions of gallons of a highly
toxic, radioactive stew – enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools –
from 177 aging, underground tanks. Many of those tanks have leaked over time –
an estimated 1 million gallons of waste – threatening the groundwater and the
neighboring Columbia River, the largest waterway in the Pacific Northwest.
Twenty- eight of those tanks have double walls, allowing the Energy
Department to pump waste from leaking single-shell tanks into them. However,
there is very little space left in those double-shell tanks today.
In addition, construction of a $12.3 billion plant to convert the waste to
a safe, stable form is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over
budget. Technical problems have slowed the project, and several workers have
filed lawsuits in recent months, claiming they were retaliated against for
raising concerns about the plant's design and safety.
"We're out of time, obviously. These tanks are starting to fail now," said
Tom Carpenter of the Hanford watchdog group Hanford Challenge. "We've got a
problem. This is big."
Inslee said he would be traveling to Washington D.C. next week to discuss
the problem further.
___
Dininny reported from Yakima, Wash.
Interference at the EPA
Science and Politics at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
snip...see full text ;
Friday, December 24, 2010
TEXAS NUCLEAR DUMP VOTE SET AMID HOLIDAY RUSH THANKS TO GOVERNOR RICK PERRY
I think the title should have read, "TEXAS LOSES TO BE NEXT BIG DUMPING
GROUND FOR NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION RADIOACTIVE WASTE", thanks to Governor Rick
Perry.
update on my father-in-law Dana (RED) Ashcraft of Miamisburg Ohio, and my
best fishing buddy, and Poisoned AT THE MONSANTO MOUND, hospice has now been
called in. ...
TSS
part II December 25, 2010
WHY then, was my father-in-laws work records denied him, with the claim
that his records were buried deep in a mountain due to contamination ? now i am
speaking of only his work records, not the radioactive waste itself, that you
claim to be 1000 % safe today. tell me that. do you know how many different
folks handled all that paper work over the years. also, the swimming pool in
Miamisburg Ohio, the old one right down from the Monsanto Mound. the town had to
shut it down and fill the swimming pool in with cement. wonder how many kids
there were exposed over the decades, including my wife ?
MONSANTO MOUND MIAMISBURG OHIO SWIMMING POOL
" We acknowledge that some people near the Mound Plant have breathed, or
will likely breathe, very small amounts of plutonium-238, hydrogen-3 (tritium),
and other radioactive substances that will be or have been released into the air
from the Mound Plant. And some people may be exposed to radioactive materials
released from the Mound Plant into the area waterways (for example, tritium in
the Miamisburg Community Park swimming pool). Nevertheless, there is no evidence
that current environmental levels of these substances cause adverse health
effects. "
Data Evaluation: Current Exposures
snip...
Then, they send all the radioactive waste to Texas. Now, we are going to
multiply this by about 38 states ?
stupid is, as stupid does, and some times you just can't fix stupid $$$
My old fishing buddy (my father-in-law Red, deceased now), took these
photos after I convinced him to get back with the Mayor and see if he would take
him down there again, and if he did, get me a photo or two of this nuclear crap
coming to Texas, thanks to the good Governor of Texas, rick perry, the steward
of the environment that he is (NOT). well, here are the photo’s ;
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Company advances on plan for West Texas nuclear dump
.jpg)
(railcars loaded with MOUND COLD WAR
NUCLEAR AFTER-BIRTH headed to Texas)
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
TEXAS WINS TO BE NEXT BIG DUMPING GROUND FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS RADIOACTIVE
WASTE
personally, I think it’s time for slick rick
perry, and all his corporate cronies, it’s time for them to go, they have done
enough harm to Texas and it’s people. environmental stewards they are not.
TSS
