Hanford

The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council (HAMTC) has issued a STOP WORK order for some workers today

The Washington State Department of Health says the air samples didn't show enough radioactive levels to be harmful, but how they got there is of great interest to officials.

This week Department of Energy officials and others at Hanford announced some new plans for how they will deal with reported leaks in waste tanks, PUREX tunnels, and the waste as well.

Friday, Hanford officials said the likelihood for the second Purex tunnel at Hanford to collapse on itself is "high."

Hanford officials say cleaning up the rest of the contaminated areas and waste storage will cost $100 billion and take 50 years at the current pace. The experts want larger portions of the money spent sooner to speed up the cleanup or else leaks of radiation will be inevitable...

According to official news releases and other sources, two alarms that sounded at the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford have resulted in a lockdown for 350 workers, but no others affected.

Details still coming out, but according to reports, the latest Federal Government Budget contains what would be $120 million dollars in cuts for Hanford.

According to news reports, Hanford tank farm workers using devises to inspect and measure contamination levels between the double shells of a waste storage tank found 3x the 'normal' level of contamination. But sources tell Newstalk870, that does NOT necessarily mean there's a leak. The tank in question was AZ-101.

Many Hanford workers, including those on the tank farms (one of our older daughters works there) had their work cancelled Wednesday, while crews were busy pouring load after load of dirt and fill into a breach in one of the contaminated Purex Plant tunnels.

Well I guess the national news crews didn't get the memo....Most Hanford workers are off today due to the tunnel collapse situation!