3 ms·

Leak in a stainless steel floor let radioactive stuff into the ground under the site.

by zamfi 3y ago

vel0city 3y ago
But like why was there all this radioactive stuff all over the floor all these years? That's my real question. What actually happened in this room? Why was there all this stuff going down a sump?
- zamfi 3y ago
  Seems like they were doing some work in there, and some stuff spilled. They probably cleaned it up, and then discovered a crack some of the spilled stuff leaked through?
- defrost 3y ago
  > the 324 Building operated from 1966 to 1996 and supported research on highly radioactive materials. There are many possible research activities that take under fume hoods in chemistry labs and hot cells in radiation labs. At Hanford scientists were interested in both charting the radioactive decay breakdowns and half lives of elements ( a huge tree of branches and possibilities ) and in weapons development - studying the properties of various clumps of matter wrt how well they absorbed particles, emmitted particles, focused particles, etc. When (for example) milling a disc of material, there will be waste, when using beakers, they will be flushed and washed out .. all this leads to material going down a drain and into a holding sump. Ideally the sumps are cleaned out, even when hazardous, but eventually many sumps will crack and leak material. Several Hanford sumps leaked - as did multitudes of Hanford waste barrels. People were pretty much learning and developing procedures on the flay in these early days of atomic fever.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  Hanford housed the first plutonium reactor in the world, that created the plutonium for the first atomic bomb at Trinity and the "Fat Man" bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. It expanded to 9 nuclear reactors and 5 plutonium processing facilities during the Cold War and produced most of the plutonium for the 60,000 weapons in the US nuclear arsenal. Because of poor safety procedures and waste disposal practices the site is a $500B dollar cleanup disaster (and costs might continue to increase well beyond that).
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  Not Hanford, but in 1958 a radiation excursion happened at Y-12, and in that case, it was storage drums that had corroded, so the bottom came off. That's just one example of how this stuff can get in the floor.

Leak in a stainless steel floor let radioactive stuff into the ground under the site.

by zamfi 3y ago

Leak in a stainless steel floor let radioactive stuff into the ground under the site.

But like why was there all this radioactive stuff all over the floor all these years? That's my real question. What actually happened in this room? Why was there all this stuff going down a sump?

zamfi 3y ago
Seems like they were doing some work in there, and some stuff spilled. They probably cleaned it up, and then discovered a crack some of the spilled stuff leaked through?
defrost 3y ago
> the 324 Building operated from 1966 to 1996 and supported research on highly radioactive materials. There are many possible research activities that take under fume hoods in chemistry labs and hot cells in radiation labs. At Hanford scientists were interested in both charting the radioactive decay breakdowns and half lives of elements ( a huge tree of branches and possibilities ) and in weapons development - studying the properties of various clumps of matter wrt how well they absorbed particles, emmitted particles, focused particles, etc. When (for example) milling a disc of material, there will be waste, when using beakers, they will be flushed and washed out .. all this leads to material going down a drain and into a holding sump. Ideally the sumps are cleaned out, even when hazardous, but eventually many sumps will crack and leak material. Several Hanford sumps leaked - as did multitudes of Hanford waste barrels. People were pretty much learning and developing procedures on the flay in these early days of atomic fever.
lamontcg 3y ago
Hanford housed the first plutonium reactor in the world, that created the plutonium for the first atomic bomb at Trinity and the "Fat Man" bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. It expanded to 9 nuclear reactors and 5 plutonium processing facilities during the Cold War and produced most of the plutonium for the 60,000 weapons in the US nuclear arsenal. Because of poor safety procedures and waste disposal practices the site is a $500B dollar cleanup disaster (and costs might continue to increase well beyond that).
joker_minmax 3y ago
Not Hanford, but in 1958 a radiation excursion happened at Y-12, and in that case, it was storage drums that had corroded, so the bottom came off. That's just one example of how this stuff can get in the floor.