The price tag for cleaning up nuclear waste at Hanford site just went up another $4.5 billion

[TexasTowelie]

Source: LA Times

The U.S. Energy Department said Friday that its long-troubled attempt to build a plant to process highly radioactive sludge at a former nuclear weapons site in central Washington state will cost an additional $4.5 billion, raising the project’s price tag to $16.8 billion.

The Hanford treatment plant, a small industrial city with some two dozen facilities on a desert plateau along the Columbia River, is more than a decade behind schedule and will cost nearly four times the original estimate made in 2000.

The government aims to transform 56 million gallons of deadly sludge stored in leaky underground tanks into solid glass, which theoretically could then be stored safely for thousands of years.

But the effort has involved an extended history of errors, miscalculations and wrongdoing. The result has been a massive, partially built concrete facility that has been under a stop-work order for three years because of serious technical doubts.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-cost-20161216-story.html

[elleng]

1. extended history of errors, miscalculations and wrongdoing

is a MODEST way of saying it.

[Mr.Bill]

2. Considering who is probably coming into office

and the cabinet members that he will appoint that have responsibility in this area the cost will be zero now. They will simply ignore it.

[keithbvadu2]

3. Super nukular genius Rick Perry will fix it.

Super nukular genius Rick Perry will fix it.

[shadowmayor]

4. No problem

Just pour some maple syrup on it. See how easy that was? More of this coming to an environmental disaster in your town.

[GreydeeThos]

5. This sounds like a gravy train to me.

For four decades the folks cleaning up Hanford have been telling us "it is worse than we thought" and "we need more money to do this". Through the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s and now on into the 2010s we have been pouring money into cleaning up Hanford. It looks like these administrators and contractors are never going to make progress as long as the Government keeps stroking them another check when they proclaim it is going to take more money. They will ride this train to the end of the line.

They need to take the money they already have and demonstrate progress on the cleanup. They get more money when they show us the cleanup is working.

[Crash2Parties]

6. So, in the 100-odd years since radioactivity was sussed out...

...I notice that we've yet to come up with any way to make it practical and safe *after* the "practically free" electricity is sold at market rates.