EIS-0113_Section_9 - Hanford Site

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S.H. Leroy
U.s. Department Of Energy JUL 31 1988-
Public Affairs
P.D. So. 550
HIM DIVISION
Richland, WA 99352
Department of energy:
A few Comment. an the Defense Waste DEIS produced by the
DOE.
The world's largest storehouse of radioactive are
containing a. amount comparable to all the fall-out that has
even reach this .planet is located in the pacific northwest
an the banks of the Columbia River.
On these rolling basalt hills, the Dept, of Defense(War)
laid claim to 570 square miles of territory in 1941 for the
,reduction of the world's first genocide weapons known to
mankind. This Hanford .Military Reservation is still making
war on the health of the surrounding environment.
The by-products of the government's 40 year history are
immense amounts of waste -- some of this waste so
radioactive i. rill be around for 500,000 years. The
governments r^cord in a Ear. cry from resolving the problem
of what to do with all this toxic and highly radioactive
waste.
A partial inventory of the waste at Hanford one will finds
-135 million gallons of high-level liquid waste
produced since 1944 during reprocessing of uranium fuel
cells to remove plutonium for nuclear weapons. This waste
contains dozens of deadly radioactive isotopes.
-some .200 billion gallons of low and intermediate
liquid waste have been dumped into ponds or discharged into
the soil in underground drainfields. Some of this waste
contains radioactive isotopes with half-lives of 4.5 billion
yearn has reached the the water table under the Sandford
reservation.
-another 5 million plus cubic feet of solid radioactive
waste consisting of refuse and contaminated equipment are
stored in covered trenches atHanford. This practice is
considered permanent disposal of these waste by the DOE. I
consider this a -nuclear nitwit" version of "out of sitar
out of mind' .
-from the PURRS ,last the DOE dempe 9 billion. of toxic
and radioactive waste by-products into cribs per year. This
practice has gone co mbated for years.
Eesfdes these Particular practices of the last 40 years, the
American public has to endur consistent subversion of
information, lying, and deceit from the government and the
WE at the Sandford Nuclear Reservation.
The.gevernments' secrecy policy on radiation mistakes is the
Same now as it was decades ago. The AEC withheld
information about radioactive liquid that had leaked out of
its' underground storage tanks at Sandford nuclear
installation. in a January 1959 subcommittee of the joint
committee on atomic energy, a general electric official
responsible for managing Hanford's waste testified "no
environmental hazard will exist as long as the tanks
maintained their integrity---we have never detected a leak
from any of these tank, so that we are I. turn persuaded
that none has ever leaked". A year later the AEC asserted
in its annual report that 'waste problems have proved
completely manageable." The fact remains the Hanford tanks
had started leaking two years earlier, in 1958, the public
did not learn that Hanford-. tanks Were leaking until years
later. Other tank leaks at unnoticed for weeks. Some of
thee. leak. were 2000 gallon. , but a 1973leaked dumped
115,000 gallon. of high level wset. into the soil. Total
releases have been 454,000 gallons or more. Are the now
double-walled stainleea steel tanks which store this highly
radioactive waste.. security to p revent this highly
carcinogenic fzem getting into the environment? i do not
think the tanks are safe..
On the subject of permissible levels of radiation, the
government is consistent in discrediting and terminating
research project. that may suggest all is not as well as
claimed. Dr. Samuel Milhan Jr. study of more than 500,000
males who died in the state from 1950. to 1971 concluded that
workers at the hanford nuclear plant were more likely to die
of cancer thanother Washington state males. Dr. Milhan
eventually lost the funding for continued research.
The government.' behavior of concealing mistake.{ issueing
misleading statements, repudiation of report s that disease
And death may be attributed to radiation doses, and
intolerances to dissent with the nuclear indumtry must
change coarse. For the public distrust is to great an
obstacle to overcome.
Why le it the public was not informed of the December 2,
1949 discharge of 5,500 curiae of 1-131 an iodine isotope
which concentrates in human thyroid p ... ibly causing massive
functional damage and later . yielding thyroid moduITS and
canner. By camper :son, a single release of 15 curies of
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WMOIVISION