While TEPCO Tries To Bury Their Reactor Scandal, America Had Its Own Nuclear Disaster Cover Up

The NEI, IAEA, and the nuclear industry have done a great deal of damage control, worked hard to get the TEPCO reactor accident out of the news to save the Nuclear Renaissance. While that was going on, there was another MAJOR nuclear spill right here in America at the Hanford site that required evacuation of employees two miles from the supposed minor spill. Much like TEPCO's refusal to be completely TRUTHFUL, we now have DOE claiming the malfunction of a pump which caused and unknown amount HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE materials to be spread over a large area as presenting no serious risk to health and or the environment...SURE DOE, we always evacuate people two miles away for absolutely NO REASON.

Hours after the cat was out of the bag, long after the wind carried unknown mounts of cancer causing radioactive carcinogens off the site and into peoples homes and lives, DOE took the time to close the barn door after the cows were already gone of spraying a concrete fixative over the top of the spill site. After all, what's a few more DEAD BABIES or BIRTH DEFECTS when we are talking about the Hanford site...they should rename the place the Hanford Death Camp with their horrid history of environmental and worker abuse.

Pump leaks 'hot' water at Hanford

A clogged pump caused an undetermined amount of highly radioactive waste to spill on the ground Thursday night and Friday morning during a transfer operation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

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PATRICK O'NEILL - The Oregonian

A clogged pump caused an undetermined amount of highly radioactive waste to spill on the ground Thursday night and Friday morning during a transfer operation at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Kim Ballinger, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy at Hanford, said several workers were involved in the transfer but none was contaminated.

As a precaution, about 50 office workers - most of them between one to two miles from the spill site - were evacuated Friday afternoon. Environmental monitoring found the traces of radioactivity Friday morning, and about 11 a.m. the workers were told to stay inside their buildings. They were moved out of the area about 3:30 p.m.

Ballinger said a team of workers sprayed a cementlike fixative over the 8- to 15-foot-diameter spill area to keep radioactive material from being carried by the wind.

Steve Wiegman, a senior technical adviser with the Department of Energy at Hanford, said no one knows how much of the radioactive liquid spilled because it rapidly sank into the ground.

"The area is very permeable, so there's no pool of liquid," he said.

The liquid was being pumped from an old single-shell storage tank to a newer double-shelled tank as part of a tank farm cleanup by contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group Inc.

Wiegman said the situation did not meet the criteria for an emergency declaration. But the U.S. Department of Energy, which oversees Hanford, has established an event coordination team and will develop a plan to clean up the spill, he said.

©2007 The Oregonian