Tagged: Hanford Tank Farms

RICHLAND, Wash. – Oregon Senator Ron Wyden will be asking the federal Government Accountability Office to investigate the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s tank monitoring and maintenance program. This after Friday’s revelation that a total of seven tanks are leaking at Hanford, and there might be more.

A Hanford Nuclear Reservation watchdog says U.S. Energy officials have bigger problems than the waste that is possibly leaking from a tank in southeast Washington. The tank, called T-111, is losing about 150 to 300 gallons of liquid waste a year.

There are renewed concerns about the condition of buried waste tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington. The U.S. Department of Energy says one of those mammoth World War II era containers – thought to have been stabilized - is losing highly radioactive waste at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons a year.

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington Governor Jay Inslee says the state has a “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to radioactive leaks from the Hanford reservation in southeast Washington. The Democrat made his comments Friday in response to news of an apparent leak of high level nuclear waste from an underground tank.

This would be the first leak of its kind since 2005. That’s when the US Department of Energy completed efforts to stabilize dozens of tanks that had released more than a million gallons of waste into the ground.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation needs new storage tanks for radioactive waste, now that one of the aging double-hulled tanks has been found to be leaking. That was the consensus Friday of a board that advises federal Hanford managers.