High-level Radioactive Waste Disposal at Hanford Reservation

High-level Radioactive Waste Disposal at Hanford Reservation PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Subcommittee on General Oversight, Northwest Power, and Forest Management
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hanford Site (Wash.)
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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High-level Radioactive Waste Disposal at Hanford Reservation

High-level Radioactive Waste Disposal at Hanford Reservation PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Subcommittee on General Oversight, Northwest Power, and Forest Management
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hanford Site (Wash.)
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description


Hanford

Hanford PDF Author: R. E. Gephart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
In Hanford: A Conversation About Nuclear Waste and Cleanup, Roy Gephart takes us on a journey through a world of facts, values, conflicts, and choices facing the most complex environmental cleanup project in the United States: the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site. Starting with the top-secret Manhattan Project, Hanford was used to create tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Hundreds of tons of waste and millions of curies remain. In an easy-to-read, illustrated text, Gephart crafts the story of Hanford becoming the world's first nuclear weapons site to release large amounts of contaminants into the environment. This was at a time when radiation biology was in its infancy, industry practiced unbridled waste dumping, and the public trusted what it was told. Hanford history reveals how little we sometimes understand events when caught inside of them. The plutonium market stalled with the end of the Cold War. Public accountability and environmental compliance ushered in a new cleanup mission. Today, Hanford is driven by remediation choices whose outcomes remain uncertain. It's a story whose epilogue will be written by future generations. This book is an information resource, written for the general reader as well as the technically trained person. It provides an overview of Hanford and cleanup issues facing the nuclear weapons complex. Each chapter is a topical mini-series. It's an idea guide that encourages readers to be informed consumers of Hanford news, and to recognize that knowledge, high ethical standards, and social values are at the heart of coping with nuclear waste. Hanford history is a window into many environmental conflicts facing our nation; it's about building uponsuccess and learning from failure. And therein lies a key lesson: when powerful interests are involved, no generation is above pretense.

Atomic Geography

Atomic Geography PDF Author: Melvin R. Adams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780874223415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Perhaps the first environmental engineer at Hanford, Melvin R. Adams spent 24 years on its 586 square miles of desert terrain. His thoughtful vignettes recall challenges and sites he worked on or found personally intriguing--like the 216-U-pond, contaminated with plutonium longer than any place on earth. In what Adams considers his most successful project, he helped determine the initial scope of the soil and solid waste cleanup. His group also designed and tested a marked, maintenance-free disposal barrier, expanded a network of groundwater monitoring wells, and developed a pilot scale pump and treatment plant. Adams shares his perspective on leaking high-level waste storage tanks, dosimeters, and Hanford¿s obsession with safety. He even answers his least favorite question, insisting he does not glow in the dark. He leaves that unique ability to spent fuel rods in water storage basins--a phenomenon known as Cherenkov radiation.

Hanford's Battle with Nuclear Waste Tank SY-101

Hanford's Battle with Nuclear Waste Tank SY-101 PDF Author: Chuck Stewart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
The nuclear reactors and separation plants at the Hanford Site in Washington State made the plutonium for the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Plutonium production expanded during the Cold War and continued into the late 1980s leaving Hanford with a majority of the national inventory of high-level radioactive waste stored in its underground tanks. This book tells the story of one specific tank, the million-gallon double-shell tank 241-SY-101 in Hanford's 200-West Area. SY-101 was a dominating element in DOE waste management for the last decade of the 20th century. The possibility of a flammable gas burn in SY-101 was acknowledged as the safety issue of highest priority in the entire DOE complex during the early 1990s. Uncontrolled crust growth demanded another large-scale emergency effort in the late 1990s that finally allowed the tank to return to service in September 2001. It received its first waste as an "active" tank in November 2002. The experience spawned a legacy of inspired engineering, tight project discipline, and supportive teamwork that still affects the Hanford culture today. This narrative presents the whole SY-101 story from the viewpoint of those who lived through it. If it makes people who work in nuclear waste management pause and worry a little when funding, scheduling, or political pressures curtail creativity and prudence, the book will have served its purpose.

Plutopia

Plutopia PDF Author: Kathryn L. Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199855765
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment--equaling four Chernobyls--laying waste to hundreds of square miles and contaminating rivers, fields, forests, and food supplies. Because of the decades of secrecy, downwind and downriver neighbors of the plutonium plants had difficulty proving what they suspected, that the rash of illnesses, cancers, and birth defects in their communities were caused by the plants' radioactive emissions. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today. -- From publisher description.

The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age

The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age PDF Author: Steve Olson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393634981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph, decades of secrecy, and the unimaginable destruction wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb. It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs. In the desert of eastern Washington State, far from prying eyes, scientists Glenn Seaborg, Enrico Fermi, and many thousands of others—the physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff at the facility—manufactured plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and for the bombs in the current American nuclear arsenal, enabling the construction of weapons with the potential to end human civilization. With his characteristic blend of scientific clarity and storytelling, Steve Olson asks why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Olson, who grew up just twenty miles from Hanford’s B Reactor, recounts how a small Washington town played host to some of the most influential scientists and engineers in American history as they sought to create the substance at the core of the most destructive weapons ever created. The Apocalypse Factory offers a new generation this dramatic story of human achievement and, ultimately, of lethal hubris.

Hanford Site, Disposal of Hanford Defense High-level, Transuranic and Tank Wastes

Hanford Site, Disposal of Hanford Defense High-level, Transuranic and Tank Wastes PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 746

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Disposal of Hanford Defense High-level, Transuranic and Tank Wastes

Disposal of Hanford Defense High-level, Transuranic and Tank Wastes PDF Author: United States. Department of Energy. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental impact statements
Languages : en
Pages : 732

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Strategy and Methodology for Radioactive Waste Characterization

Strategy and Methodology for Radioactive Waste Characterization PDF Author: International Atomic Energy Agency
Publisher: IAEA
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Over the past decade significant progress has been achieved in the development of waste characterization and control procedures and equipment as a direct response to ever-increasing requirements for quality and reliability of information on waste characteristics. Failure in control procedures at any step can have important, adverse consequences and may result in producing waste packages which are not compliant with the waste acceptance criteria for disposal, thereby adversely impacting the repository. The information and guidance included in this publication corresponds to recent achievements and reflects the optimum approaches, thereby reducing the potential for error and enhancing the quality of the end product. -- Publisher's description.

High-level Nuclear Waste

High-level Nuclear Waste PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Subcommittee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Radioactive waste disposal
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description