THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

What do you do when efforts to clean up a problem aren't going to work? And you can't leave the problem where it is because it involves nuclear waste? We should find out sometime in the near future.

A nearly completed government facility intended to treat the radioactive byproducts of nuclear weapons production is riddled with design flaws that could put the entire operation at risk of failure, according to a leaked internal report.

A technical review of the treatment plant on the grounds of the former Hanford nuclear site identified hundreds of “design vulnerabilities” and other weaknesses, some serious enough to lead to spills of radioactive material.

The draft report is the latest in a series of blows to the clean-up effort at Hanford, the once-secret government reservation in eastern Washington state where much of the nation’s plutonium stockpile originated. Engineers have struggled for years to come up with a safe method for disposing of Hanford’s millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste, much of which is stored in leaky underground tanks.

Energy Department officials have spent tens of millions of dollars to design and construct the site’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, intended to convert some of Hanford’s radioactive waste into a glasslike product that could be stored underground in the future. Although the plant is regarded as one of Hanford’s most successful projects, the internal report identified serious flaws in its design...

The report cites fundamental lapses in multiple areas, ranging from ventilation of waste-
handling areas to the plant’s backup electricity supply. The reviewers found numerous problems with the system that “vitrifies” waste by turning it into glass, noting that the engineers miscalculated how long it would take for the radioactive end-product to cool. “When a container full of molten glass is lifted, there is a chance that the container lifting flange will fail because it has not cooled enough to regain its strength,” the document states.

It's nice to know reviewed the design before construction was complete. Hate to find out about these problems in a working plant.