Safety doubts raised at U.S. nuclear waste cleanup project

[cal04]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Engineers and scientists say equipment being installed by Bechtel Corp. at the Hanford site in Washington state poses risks, but the Energy Department is letting work continue.

The Energy Department has asserted that Bechtel Corp. underplayed safety risks from equipment it is installing at the nation's largest nuclear waste cleanup project, according to government records.

A federal engineering review team found in late July that Bechtel's safety evaluation of key equipment at the plant at the Hanford site in Washington state was incomplete and that "the risks are more serious" than Bechtel acknowledged when it sought approval to continue with construction, the documents say.

Senior scientists at the site said in emails obtained by The Times that Bechtel's designs for tanks and mixing equipment are flawed, representing such a massive risk that work should be stopped on that part of the construction project.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuclear-defects-20110814,0,5490202.story

[jwirr]

1. This may be because Bechtel, Inc still believes that nukes are not

dangerous. In the 80s I lived with a worker at their Coalstrip plants in Montana. He later went on to work on a nuke in Pennsylvania. They sent little booklets out detailing why coal was fine since God said it was okay to exploit his world and arguing the same for nukes. And this is the corporation
the government has contracted with to clean up this plant and to find a national storage site for the nuke waste.

I do not feel any safer now than I did then.

[TheMadMonk]

2. IF anything, this is because America still has not outgrown its penchant....

...for exhausting all other options, before doing the right thing.

There is much, much, much more profit in being paid to do the same job twice (or more), than in doing it right the first time. And sadly, that is exactly the way the good ole USofA behaves.

From reading the article, it appears to me, that virtually all risk is financial. And that the project appears to have been managed in such a way, that it remains cheaper to pay the orriginal contractors to fix problems (which means paying them for the problems they created), than to start from scratch.

Treating this as an "anti-nuke" issue, rather than the deliberate fraud it is, is playing straight into their hands.

[russspeakeasy]

3. What ? What could possibly go wrong ???

"their designs are flawed"...that hasn't stopped them before....