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Emergency Declared At Hanford Nuclear Site In Wash |
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arirish
Admin Group Joined: June 19 2013 Location: Arkansas Status: Offline Points: 39215 |
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Posted: May 09 2017 at 11:16am |
Emergency Declared At Hanford Nuclear Site In Washington
The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency alert Tuesday morning at the Hanford Site north of Richland, Washington. Some workers at a former chemical processing plant have been evacuated and about 3,000 others near the area at the center of the Hanford Site were directed to take shelter indoors. A representative at the Hanford Emergency Operations Center who would not give her name said there were no injuries reported. ”There is no indication of a release of contamination at this point,” said a subsequent statement on the Hanford Emergency Information website. Officials were concerned about contamination in soil covering railroad tunnels near the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant cleanup site. The tunnels contain contaminated materials. The alert was triggered by the discovery of a “small sunken area of soil” that covers a tunnel. The area is not open to the general public. A statement on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Emergency Information website said that civilians in surrounding Benton and Franklin counties did not need to take any precautionary actions. The plant, also known by its acronym PUREX, was used during the Cold War to chemically extract plutonium from irradiated fuel rods for use in nuclear weapons. A spokesman for the Washington Emergency Management Division said the state Emergency Operations Center has been activated and is monitoring the situation. The Oregon Department of Energy, which is responsible for radiological safety, activated its emergency operations center as well. Hanford sits next to the Columbia River. It was one of the original Manhattan Project sites. Its nine nuclear reactors irradiated uranium fuel rods. That created plutonium, which was extracted with chemicals, processed and shipped to weapons factories. Each step produced radioactive waste. Hanford is the nation’s largest nuclear cleanup site, with 56 million gallons of radioactive waste sitting in old, leaky underground tanks. http://www.opb.org/news/article/hanford-nucelar-site-emergency-operations-center-contaiminated-soil/ |
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Dutch Josh
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