Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Thanatos: WSJ: "Waste-Plant Dispute Builds"


Wall Street Journal Sep 10, 2012 p. A3 by  A. Morse

[Excerpted] "The U.S. Department of Energy is slowing construction of a facility to process the country's largest accumulation of radioactive waste amid an increasingly acrimonious dispute abut he design and safety of the $12.2 billion project..."

Majia here: At issue at the site - Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant - are the rooms (called "black cells") that are going to hold radioactive waste during processing. The plant is supposed to transform highly toxic radioactive and chemical waste into glass logs that will be stored at the site.

One of the double-shelled "rooms" is leaking and radioactive waste was found between the two containment walls.

Recently a DOE official who oversees engineering of the plant declared that Bechtel National Inc. was "not competent" to fulfill role as facility's chief designer.


The troubles besetting this "processing plant" point to the problem of handling toxic waste. There exists no safe method for storing highly contaminated waste. 

A review - Subsurface Behavior of Plutonium and Americium at Non-Hanford Sites and Relevance to Hanford - illustrates that plutonium migration is a widespread problem
 http://www.pnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-17386.pdf

We are ensuring our future extinction by forging elements that are essentially alien to the life that developed on planet Earth.

Freud was correct about the seductive power of the death drive we today refer to as thanatos




 

 

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