Hanford plant - wikimedia commons[/caption]Carol Forsloff - While politicians claim they know the answers to the nation's energy needs, risks to people and their environment remain of serious concern to scientists, especially those risks involving earthquakes, death and disease from the processes that had been once touted as safe.
Worries regarding the San Onofre reactor in California, recently shut down because of a radiation leak and damaged equipment, have once again caused scientists to worry about the nuclear waste and the active reactor at Hanford in Eastern Washington as well.
While folks in California are watching what happens to the nuclear energy issues, hydraulic fracturing has been in the headlines too. Hydraulic fracturing is the process used to extract natural gas, an optional energy source that has been highly touted by the oil and gas industries. But concerns about the environmental damage caused by this process has caused more and more people to wonder what's the solution for finding new energy and whether or not it is worth the risks to the environment to have nuclear energy and hydraulic fracturing as methods of meeting the growing demand for energy.
On April 5 Common Dreams reported that a US Geological Survey research team has determined that the process of drilling for oil and natural gas is responsible for many of the earthquakes that have occurred in the United States from Alabama to the Northern Rockies.
In the Pacific Northwest there are folks who continue to raise concerns about the Hanford Nuclear Plant in Eastern Washington State. While most of the reactors were shut down many years ago, there remains a consistent concern that the nuclear waste and lack of safety precautions and proper oversight will continue to create the potential for a major disaster that could impact the Columbia River, a waterway that feeds into much of the Oregon - Washington lands.
Hanford, Washington is the site of the nation's first full-scale plutonium development facility.
In 1962 farmers reported many of their animals were born with severe deformities and nightmarish effects to function that became increasingly a concern for the residents surrounding the nuclear plant as well as people who lived in regions bordering on Canada.
240,000 people live in the immediate areas surrounding Hanford. People talked about miscarriages, birth defects and rare diseases impacting children that increased following the development of the plant at Hanford. Spiegel Online reports the story of a family's experience related to the time when in the 1960's, when a farmer's wife, Juanita Andrewjewski, created a "death map" of the area near her house. She put crosses for heart disease and circles for cancer on that map. Not long after this map was created, 67 people had been affected with these diseases.
Stewart Udall called Hanford the "most tragic chapter in American Cold War history." He was Secretary of the Interior under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
Initially folks took pride in the fact that Hanford had been chosen as the jewel in the crown of nuclear development, but that pride soon turned into great fear. As Spiegel reports, residents of the Tri-Cities of Pasco, Kennewick and Richland, " are among the most highly radiated humans on earth."
Although Hanford closed down in 1989, it continues to have a live reactor as well as nuclear waste. Only half of the waste has been entombed at a price in the billions, as the project of decontamination continues. Nevertheless, the potential leaks and the age of the material and equipment pose substantial risks, and it will take approximately 15 more years of the decontamination process to complete the housing of the nuclear waste.
210 earthquakes happened in the Hanford area during 2010, the strongest measuring 3.0. But the fact that these earthquakes aren't so severe is not reassuring to environmental scientists and others. "The leaking underground tanks and the contaminated groundwater moving toward the river mean a radioactive future for the river unless the mess can be cleaned up in time to avoid a serious radiological disaster," says Glen Spain, a regional director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA). "The legacy of vast amounts of nuclear waste … is still a ticking time bomb."