The world's first full-scale nuclear reactor, built in 13 months to produce plutonium for an atomic bomb during World War II, is now a National Historic Landmark, the federal government announced Monday.
"Building the B Reactor was a feat of engineering genius. So, too, was the construction a testament to the excellence of working Americans," said Lynn Scarlett, deputy secretary of the Department of Interior. "There was no wiggle room for error."
-SO THEN WHY DID IT LEAK AND CONTAMINATE TRILLIONS OF GALLONS OF GROUNDWATER?!!!!-
History buffs, former weapons workers and local officials have been seeking recognition for the plant for six years to help save it from being dismantled or permanently cocooned as part of the cleanup of the highly contaminated complex in south-central Washington state.
-GOES TO SHOW YOU HOW NAIVE THE GENERAL POPULATION IS. IT'S A SHAME BUILDING A TOURIST ATTRACTION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CLEANING UP NUCLEAR WASTE-
Hanford and B Reactor were the centerpiece of the Manhattan Project, a top-secret effort to build an atomic bomb in the 1940s. More than 50,000 workers moved to the Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco for the massive project on the banks of the Columbia River.
-AND BECAUSE OF THIS SITE, THE COLUMBIA RIVER IS HIGHLY POLLUTED-
Construction began on June 7, 1943, six months after physicist Enrico Fermi turned the theory of nuclear power into the reality of the Atomic Age. Eight more reactors were built at Hanford to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, leaving a legacy of pollution that has made Hanford the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup costs expected to top $50 billion.
-CLEANUP HAS BEEN PUT OFF FOR DECADES AND THE SITE STILL CONTINUES TO CONTAMINATE THE AREA-
Five reactors have been dismantled and cocooned, a process in which buildings around the reactors are removed, all but the shield walls surrounding the reactor cores are leveled and the cores are sealed in concrete.
The B Reactor was shut down in 1968 and decommissioned. Under a cleanup schedule managed by the Department of Energy, dismantling could have begun as early as 2009. However, the department said it would maintain the reactor while the National Park Service decides whether it should be preserved and made available for public access.
Hank Kosmata, president of the B Reactor Museum Association in Richland, noted that achieving National Historic Landmark status for Reactor B took longer than building it.
-AND WAITING FOR THE U.S. GOVERNMENT TO CLEAN UP ITS "LANDMARK" CONTINUES TO TAKE EVEN LONGER!!-
About 2,000 people have visited the complex this year. Next year, Energy Department officials plan to expand the number of tours of the building without impeding cleanup, said Jeffrey Kupfer, acting deputy secretary.
-YES, THE BEST PLACE TO VISIT IS ALWAYS A CONTAMINATED NUCLEAR REACTOR. HURRY, BOOK YOUR TOUR NOW!!-
story from the AP.
comments from me.
I do not want to make this a political post... but if you're planning on voting for McCain this November, you better be prepared to lobby against his "alternative energy" plan which consists of embracing NUCLEAR POWER, the most unsafe energy. Research how many nuclear power plants or reactors have leaked. The amount of contamination produced by nuclear power is astonding. The most recent case was discovered and publicized earlier this month when The United States has admitted that a nuclear-powered submarine steadily leaked radiation at three Japanese ports, as well as the Pacific island of Guam and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii FOR OVER TWO YEARS. If you are wondering why cancer rates are rising, look no further.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Abandoned nuclear reactors generate new surge of tourism
By Hugo Martin Tribune Newspapers
11:25 PM CDT, August 23, 2008
HANFORD, Wash. — A platoon of double-crested cormorants took flight from the eastern shore of the Columbia River, skimming the sun-sparkled surface as two slender white egrets stood in the nearby shallows, hunting small fish hiding in the reeds.
Twenty kayakers, mostly tourists from the Pacific Northwest, paddled along, letting the steady current do most of the work. They coasted past mule deer grazing on the shore, coyotes stalking the sandy beaches and cliff swallows buzzing the nearby white bluffs.
But the main attraction was on the western shore: several bland, industrial-gray structures and towering smokestacks, a collection of buildings that gave birth to America's Atomic Age.
Welcome to the Hanford Reach, where one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River encounters America's most contaminated nuclear site.
Along this flat, mostly treeless scrubland, the U.S. government built nine reactors from 1943 to 1963, including the historic B Reactor that produced the world's first weapons-grade plutonium for the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.
The reactors have leaked so much radioactivity into the air, land and water that the contamination caused by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident seems trivial by comparison.
Yet merchants and tourism directors here in southern Washington state see the river and the shuttered reactors as a growing tourist draw.
Imagine a theme park next to Chernobyl's nuclear power plant. As odd as it may sound, the idea seems to be working at Hanford.
The popular kayak tours are one example. Pat Welle, owner of Columbia Kayak Adventures, who leads two or three groups each month past the nuclear sites, said her business has more than doubled since she started it in 2004. A jet boat tour operator plans to add a second boat, and the river plays host to several bass fishing tournaments each year.
"I think the attraction is the unique combination of scenery — the white bluffs and the wildlife — and that odd collection of nuclear sites," Welle said.
The reactors have long been shut down, but the surrounding land rumbles with bulldozers, dump trucks and crews in radiation suits working on a $2 billion-a-year cleanup project — the most expensive such project in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The irony is that although the reactors contaminated hundreds of acres, government restrictions on access left the surrounding lands largely undisturbed for more than 40 years, allowing wildlife to flourish.
The effort to make the Hanford Reach a tourist hot spot got a boost in 2000 when then- President Bill Clinton proclaimed 195,000 acres along the river and around the nuclear site a national monument. About 60,000 people now visit annually, including anglers, hikers, birders and history buffs.
That number is likely to grow under a plan by the National Park Service to upgrade boat launches and picnic sites and to open the B Reactor for regular public tours. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is also expected to approve a recommendation this month to declare the B Reactor a national historic landmark.
The story began in 1942 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began searching for a plutonium production site for the then-secret Manhattan Project. With large tracts of land and access to large volumes of water to cool the reactor, the Hanford area along the Columbia River seemed perfect.
America's first large-scale nuclear reactor was built in about a year. Most workers at the B Reactor were clueless about what they were developing until the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Later, a headline in the local paper announced: "Peace! Our Bomb Clinched It!"
During the next 20 years, the federal government built eight more reactors along the Columbia River in a 586-square-mile area known as the Hanford site.
In 1948 a dike at a reactor waste pond broke, dumping 28 pounds of uranium into the Columbia River.
Today, scientists and biologists extensively test almost every creature along the river, whether a tadpole or a deer.
11:25 PM CDT, August 23, 2008
HANFORD, Wash. — A platoon of double-crested cormorants took flight from the eastern shore of the Columbia River, skimming the sun-sparkled surface as two slender white egrets stood in the nearby shallows, hunting small fish hiding in the reeds.
Twenty kayakers, mostly tourists from the Pacific Northwest, paddled along, letting the steady current do most of the work. They coasted past mule deer grazing on the shore, coyotes stalking the sandy beaches and cliff swallows buzzing the nearby white bluffs.
But the main attraction was on the western shore: several bland, industrial-gray structures and towering smokestacks, a collection of buildings that gave birth to America's Atomic Age.
Welcome to the Hanford Reach, where one of the last free-flowing stretches of the Columbia River encounters America's most contaminated nuclear site.
Along this flat, mostly treeless scrubland, the U.S. government built nine reactors from 1943 to 1963, including the historic B Reactor that produced the world's first weapons-grade plutonium for the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.
The reactors have leaked so much radioactivity into the air, land and water that the contamination caused by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident seems trivial by comparison.
Yet merchants and tourism directors here in southern Washington state see the river and the shuttered reactors as a growing tourist draw.
Imagine a theme park next to Chernobyl's nuclear power plant. As odd as it may sound, the idea seems to be working at Hanford.
The popular kayak tours are one example. Pat Welle, owner of Columbia Kayak Adventures, who leads two or three groups each month past the nuclear sites, said her business has more than doubled since she started it in 2004. A jet boat tour operator plans to add a second boat, and the river plays host to several bass fishing tournaments each year.
"I think the attraction is the unique combination of scenery — the white bluffs and the wildlife — and that odd collection of nuclear sites," Welle said.
The reactors have long been shut down, but the surrounding land rumbles with bulldozers, dump trucks and crews in radiation suits working on a $2 billion-a-year cleanup project — the most expensive such project in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The irony is that although the reactors contaminated hundreds of acres, government restrictions on access left the surrounding lands largely undisturbed for more than 40 years, allowing wildlife to flourish.
The effort to make the Hanford Reach a tourist hot spot got a boost in 2000 when then- President Bill Clinton proclaimed 195,000 acres along the river and around the nuclear site a national monument. About 60,000 people now visit annually, including anglers, hikers, birders and history buffs.
That number is likely to grow under a plan by the National Park Service to upgrade boat launches and picnic sites and to open the B Reactor for regular public tours. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is also expected to approve a recommendation this month to declare the B Reactor a national historic landmark.
The story began in 1942 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began searching for a plutonium production site for the then-secret Manhattan Project. With large tracts of land and access to large volumes of water to cool the reactor, the Hanford area along the Columbia River seemed perfect.
America's first large-scale nuclear reactor was built in about a year. Most workers at the B Reactor were clueless about what they were developing until the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Later, a headline in the local paper announced: "Peace! Our Bomb Clinched It!"
During the next 20 years, the federal government built eight more reactors along the Columbia River in a 586-square-mile area known as the Hanford site.
In 1948 a dike at a reactor waste pond broke, dumping 28 pounds of uranium into the Columbia River.
Today, scientists and biologists extensively test almost every creature along the river, whether a tadpole or a deer.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Hong Kong smog
Air pollution is causing 10,000 premature deaths a year in Hong Kong, Macau and southern China's Pearl River Delta, according to a report published on Thursday.
Respiratory diseases caused by the worsening smog is estimated to be costing 440,000 hospital bed days and 11 million doctor visits and costing the region's economy 6.7 billion yuan ($964 million) a year.
The estimates are contained in a report on the effects of poor air quality by the Hong Kong-based think tank Civic Exchange published in newspapers Thursday.
The survey was conducted over nine months by health, science and public policy experts who based their findings on air pollution from 2003 to 2006.
Smog in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta has worsened considerably in the past decade, largely because of vehicle emissions and pollution from neighbouring industrial southern China.
Previous reports have warned that the air pollution in Hong Kong is causing thousands of premature deaths and that foreign investors are avoiding the former British colony because of its smog.
~FROM BLOG: Living In Hong Kong - Life of a Filipino web developer in Hong Kong. With descriptions of typical Hong Kong living, food, economics, entertainment, politics and just about everything else.
It's the year 2008, why the hell is the most technologically advanced country still dependent on COAL?!!
Respiratory diseases caused by the worsening smog is estimated to be costing 440,000 hospital bed days and 11 million doctor visits and costing the region's economy 6.7 billion yuan ($964 million) a year.
The estimates are contained in a report on the effects of poor air quality by the Hong Kong-based think tank Civic Exchange published in newspapers Thursday.
The survey was conducted over nine months by health, science and public policy experts who based their findings on air pollution from 2003 to 2006.
Smog in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta has worsened considerably in the past decade, largely because of vehicle emissions and pollution from neighbouring industrial southern China.
Previous reports have warned that the air pollution in Hong Kong is causing thousands of premature deaths and that foreign investors are avoiding the former British colony because of its smog.
~FROM BLOG: Living In Hong Kong - Life of a Filipino web developer in Hong Kong. With descriptions of typical Hong Kong living, food, economics, entertainment, politics and just about everything else.
It's the year 2008, why the hell is the most technologically advanced country still dependent on COAL?!!
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