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Deal with waste containment first Paige
Knight, Hanford Watch, Jan
8, 2005 Rob, thank you for your appreciation for this forum and thank you for sharing insights/values from your friends. Let me respond with further thoughts. I look at the possibility of one large (extremely gargantuan) waste site and the first thing that comes to mind is cumulative impacts which science has not studied much if at all. This is something I have felt from day one that needs to be studied by the scientific community. Then I look at many waste sites across Hanford and agree that the monitoring process would be a nightmare and would not happen. That is not the way of humankind yet. So I then look at the suggestion of a "moderate" number of waste sites at Hanford and again we still need to consider cumulative impacts. That is what we need to be demanding in order to make responsible decisions for future generations -- your kids, our kids, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren. Or are we too heartless in our short-sightedness? I believe that we have to deal with the wastes at Hanford that exist now, first and foremost. I also believe that if we are to take a reasonable stance across the nuclear weapons complex, we need to stabilize, in substantial containers and in on-site vaults all the waste that exists at each site now. The containers as well as the vaults have to be the best possible for as long as is technologically possible. Transporting waste back and forth between the many many sites is a disaster waiting to happen, a shell game that has been named as that for the past two decades. For this country to even contain on site all the existing waste will blast any budget. But that is the first necessary step for transportation. Let's start there. Once all the existing waste is contained let's add up the costs and look then at transporting the wastes across the country. Will a budget even exist for that? And then let's ask what to do with continued production of waste. It's pretty overwhelming, that is why I say, begin at step one, containment and then, billions of dollars later move on to step two, do we move it and where and for what reason? Politics or scientific logic? I hope others of you will add to this dialogue. Sincerely, |