L3. New High-level Waste Tanks Under Construction

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L3. New High-level Waste Tanks Under Construction.

L3. New High-level Waste Tanks Under Construction. Once extracted, plutonium can be transported without shielding because it is an alpha emitter, but millions of liters of intensely radioactive liquid wastes are left behind. These five million-liter double-walled carbon steel tanks under construction are designed to hold liquid high-level nuclear waste from Hanford's plutonium-production program. They replace Hanford's older, single-walled tanks, which leaked approximately two million liters of high-level radioactive waste into the soil. Hanford nuclear engineers admit that they cannot recover these waste materials as they are too radioactive to handle and too dangerous to disturb. The new tanks are designed to continuously cool and stir the wastes they contain. Should either of these operations fail, a major release of radioactivity into the atmosphere could occur. The new tanks have a life expectancy of 50 years. Hanford Reservation 200 Area, Richland, Washington, 16 November 1984.

These photographs by Robert Del Tredici are protected by copyright and are available for purchase as high-quality digital prints on archival paper or as silver gelatin prints from bdeltredici@hotmail.com.

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