The Hanford Story - Plutonium Finishing Plant
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- Опубліковано 14 тра 2024
- Hanford produced nearly two-thirds of the nation's plutonium from the 1940s to the 1980s, and the Plutonium Finishing Plant was a key part of that mission. Today, the plant is Hanford's most hazardous facility and poses a monumental cleanup challenge to the Department of Energy and contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company
- Наука та технологія
There is still residual (small amounts of) plutonium in the machinery/equipment in the plant. We're cleaning it up as we prepare buildings for demolition. Hanford has hundreds of buildings with residual contamination or radioactive material/waste, left over from the production era (1940s-1980s). Hanford hasn't produced plutonium since the 1980s.
HanfordSite Does Plutonium production exist off site or is there enough supply that it is no longer needed at all? Very cool guys! Thanks for making this!
Minuscule means small amount. Residual means something remaining from a greater part.
@@AldoSchmedack The US has produced all the weapons-grade plutonium it needs for the foreseeable future (i.e. centuries) and has no plans to produce more. One thing we could use is more research/interesting isotope reactors to produce more plutonium isotopes for RTGs (radiothermal electric generators like on the Curiosity/Perseverance rovers) for future space exploration.
@@throwback19841 I wish the US did not have plans to produce more weapons grade plutonium. We actually do not know. The plans to produce huge numbers of plutonium pits for new and existing nuclear weapons may set the weapons industry up for contemplating creation of additional plutonium. The industry is accountable to only the Congress and itself.
Keep up the good work.
I live in Yakima just half an hour drive away from Hanford. Crazy how close it is to cities but Hanford plant needed the Colombia river . Cool video.
Very cool guys! Thank you from the citizens you help protect! It must be pretty cool to be a part of something so rewarding and interesting!
Fascinating piece of history.
it's present !
worked there . . . learned alot . . . the nation should save it as a historical success!!
This score totally matches the content.
it's sad to think about how creative, ingenious and resourceful people can be when it comes to war and ways to kill your "enemy"
I really like this video. I have watched it multiple times.
I was surprised to learn that the Plutonium was not generated in commercial reactors. The whole heat ouptut of these reactors in Hanford was dumped into the river. Japan has collected about 42 metric tons of Plutonium through their commercial nuclear power program.
It is generated and consumed in commercial power reactors, but that is too contaminated to be useful for weapons.
Not much to be proud of.@@NormReitzel
@@anthonyboarman3833they are saying it’s a little silly to be like “oh no, somehow the weapons we made to kill millions of innocent people have harmed innocent people in the wrong place”
Excellent
No chance of a resonance cascade scenario here then. Good work. 👍
Safe nuclear technology exists (LFTR) but we didn't develop it because it didn't yield weapons grade materials (tritium, plutonium, etc.) The war machine drove the nuclear dream, not the desire for a clean planet.
I've had a chance recently to talk to a few nuclear engineers about this subject. The weapons grade thing just is not true. Sure, back in the day, power plants were a side effect of the Manhattan Project, but the real reason why we don't have Thorium reactors now is money.
Solar, wind, and even fusion is getting to the point to where they are A LOT more viable than in the past, and in terms of cost of upkeep and startup, are a lot more desirable.
90% of the costs of all nuclear fission plants are upkeep costs, 10% only goes towards the fuel. In order for thorium to be viable (cost wise, Oakridge already proved the concept works) some company is gonna have to foot billions to get a plant up and running. And no one will decommission a uranium plant to replace it with a thorium plant because of the development costs, cleanup costs, and the decomm process. On top of all this, you have the stigma that nukes carry, no one wants them around (which tbh, is kind of silly, even our pressurized water reactors are pretty safe and cleaner than coal).
I highly doubt we will see more fission plants being commissioned around here (except in warships) , but a good place for thorium fueled reactors would be in space colonies, stations, or large scale autonomous satellites; where solar might not be viable due to distance or dust, and wind may not be viable due to vacuum or lack of proper atmosphere (and an RTG just won't cut it).
Not really since this so called safe reactors aren't safe either
How are eastern washington thyroid glands doing now?
The radioactive waste leaking from the tanks should have migrated into the ground water and be contaminating into the Columbia river right about this decade. We’ll see
well something has to power the flux capacitor
O Okay I wondered why my Delorean was so slow. I only ran E98 petrol.
where does the supply of plutonium come from now? is there a stockpile, or is it reclaimed from warheads that get decommissioned? I wonder how long plutonium remains useful after production.
Google
There's actually a huge stored surplus from decommissioned weapons that was planned to be 'burned' in MOX-fuel assemblies in commercial reactors, but the MOX-plant (planned in South Carolina) turned out to become to expensive
I’ve had a lifetime of working in nuclear facilities here in the UK. Watching this video shows to me how poor the procedures are. Pu has a half life of 23,000 years so it’s so important to avoid any contamination during the plutonium purification process. Wearing a dust mask when working with gloveboxes is essential. When the rubber glove fails it gives you protection prior to replacing that glove. I fully support the nuclear industry when operated by the correct workforce. :-)
good to see the workers are taking so much care now; did they have a similar level of protection/care while the plant was operational? Plutonium is one of the world's most deadly substances, and is dangerous in tiny quantities (grams or less).
Christopher Webber to the best of my knowledge pretty much every reactor / plutonium production plant was thoroughly regulated and thus the workers to my understanding were always provided with the protective equipment that they needed for whatever given task at hand. Rocky flats (one of the bomb factories mentioned in this video) on the other hand... well, I’ll leave you to go down that rabbit hole at your own convenience.
I think you mean nanograms
They did not run the site safely back in the day. Absolutely terrifying
@@exet No. If you eat it we are talking grams. Breathing it in or injecting it (glass shrapnel from a burst vacuum vessel or similar) is much less, but we don't have a good idea how much less due to lack of highly exposed individuals. Read e.g. "A 42-y medical follow-up of Manhattan Project plutonium workers". These workers were working with Pu before there really were any proper safety measures; average lung burden in this group was 500 bq (corresponding to 200 ng pure Pu-239). At the time of the study 4 people had died and using the statistics for death rates an expected 9.2 deaths should have occurred in that time in a non-exposed population. It's not likely plutonium made them live longer, but there's not enough exposed people to say what amounts will cause harm.
This is generally true of internal or low dose rate exposure. LNT just fails in non-acute cases and has no scientific basis. See e.g. the radium girls; some of the most exposed people to have ever lived. These were generally girls who painted watch dials with radioluminescent paint in the 30's and sharpened the tips of the brushes with their mouth. Radium is similar to calcium and accumulates in the bone, causing a cancer called bone sarcoma; this is a rare type of cancer; meaning it should be extremely easy to see a statistical difference in cancer rates in those exposed by looking for this rare type of cancer. Those with committed lifetime doses less than 60 Sv (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) weren't statistically distinguishable from a control group. The most exposed had committed lifetime doses of several thousand sieverts (an accute whole body dose of ~5 Sv is about 50% lethal from ARS). Another great example of the LNT hypothesis failing miserably is the cobolt-60 apartments study. If it wasn't an accident, no ethics committee on the planet would ever let you exposed people to these kinds of doses.
The coefficients for the LNT model are derived from atomic bomb survivors who received acute whole body dose in seconds (about 80% instantly and about 20% from short-lived isotopes in the rising fire ball). This was gammas and neutrons and those most exposed also often received severe burns. You take these people, follow them up and extrapolate a straight line down to zero, et voila, that's your coefficients. The problem is that it is simply not true for any other situation; it's more correct to say we don't actually now much about the harm or benefit of lose dose rate, chronic exposure. It's too much in the statistical weeds to say much about anything.
LNT hypothesis shouldn't be used for calculating expected deaths. It's just a regulatory assumption with no basis in science.
I'm very interested in learning about new, innovative ways we can remove or possibly speed up the radioactive decay process, or even new ways of safely disposing radioactive waste. Do you know where can I find information regarding this?
Are you serious?
Look up , molten salt reactors
You can’t. It’s pretty straightforward actually, either you bury it, mix it in with something, or reuse it. The best way is to reuse it. You can’t “speed” decay up with today’s technology, though I do believe it could potentially be possible. But that would require a better understanding and harnessing of the standard model. Which we are far far far from doing. If you want to help, research ways we can use the various isotopes in safe ways. Smoke detectors use the americium from nuclear waste. Perhaps there are more things we could use it for, like efficient RTGs for instance.
I want to see a picture of it
I am curious if the control levers, where Enrico Fermi began the first chain reaction at Hanford, are preserved.
Fermi's lab was in a stadium at the University of Chicago. Hanford didn't exist yet. And they weren't levers, they were rods of carbon. They worked by absorbing neutrons. The more you pulled the rods out, the more neutrons there were to sustain the chain reaction.
Doug Ball hence why their called (control rods)
No. Dismantled before WW2
Much if not most of those hand made tools, are preserved in the FPF's main conference room glass case.. no doubt moved since this deconstruction.. these were hand carved bits of wood and bailing wire in many cases, bent table spoons with long natural stick wood handles. (I was consulting there in 1992-1993 range)
Can i get a job from u guys that cool stuff man
I worked with a supervisor from N Reactor he said a lot of fuel didn’t push out of the core completely/properly it’s shutdown now but I wonder how far dismantled
Not unlike the Windscale air cooled reactors in the UK which caught fire and still has fuel stuck in the melted fuel channels.
Liquid Thorium Fueled Reactors can do that.
First you want to separate the materials- there is a lot of non-radioactive and low radioactive components to the "waste"
energyfromthorium
Yeah... ON PAPER they can do it!
If nuclear science was that simple, the entire post war testing program would have been redundant.
Too bad they don't want to build liquid thorium reactors
why didnt they just say that the plutonium buttons were shipped to the rocky flats plant in colorado to building 707 melted and alloyed with gallium and cast into pits.
Why didn't they just say that the plutonium buttons were shipped to the rocky flats plant in Colorado to building 707 melted and alloyed with gallium and cast into pits.
How does this differ from the facility at Oak Ridge, and which came first?
Please refer to this website for a historical timeline of the Manhattan Project: www.energy.gov/management/office-management/operational-management/history/manhattan-project
More uncontained radioactive contamination than Oak Ridge
Oak Ridge was a uranium enrichment facility, they were built more or less simultaneously. I think Oak Ridge achieved meaningful production earlier tho.
My second wife worked in commercial nuclear power. She told me no one in commercial power would even consider working at the Hanford site.
you see I am there
Are any of you Hanford folks old enough to remember my uncle…….Bud Callen??
I wouldn't go Near that place! :O
That's a shame. It's one of the most beautiful drives in the country out Hwy 243 from Richland, Wa to Leavenworth Wa following the Columbia River.
You don’t have to turn on your lights at night.
I would!
It always amazes me that we seem to just move the waste around from one place to another all while contaminating more stuff. Why do we claim this is actually cleaning up when we are just moving stuff around?
A grocery store being involved with nuclear weapon manufacturing is so American!
like you did
I hope you guys aren't scrapping that metal!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You'll find it in your next metal lawn chair!! Or a new nuclear cold-free refrigerator.
Hard to believe how idiotic we were about safety and pollution back then.
Take a look at Rocky Flats, outside Denver where the plutonium was milled upwind of the metro area. Atop a barren and windy mesa. With several confirmed plutonium fires. The national wildlife refuge there still forbids access to waste storage pads.
Oops
Why did we make so much ?
Stockpiling.
The Cold War
Because it was a profit making enterprise. You had 100s of thousands of people employed across the country directly and indirectly, and power brokers protecting their cash cows.
In reality, there was no strategic need for more than a dozen small atomic weapons. The earth is only so big.
The joke goes:
'why do we need enough nukes to wipe out the planet a hundred times over?'
'Just in case we miss, son'
Cold War psychosis.
"The Defense Mission" "Part of the Mission." Three words: Helium, balloons, Cleveland. Oh- and twelve trillion of American tax dollars. "We're bigger than US Steel."
Opps....
Rebuild the plant - quick.
The Russians are back and they are as mad as hell.
Indeed we do have literally tons in surplus inventory. I hope and pray we use it for deep space exploration instead of corporate welfare a la the mixed oxide fuel boondoogle.
Frank Homer So where is the Plutonium being processed now ?
This is the future checking in...They are mad.
@@tetrabromobisphenol Wrong isotope, also vastly more than could ever be used.
this aged well
OH YEAH. WHAT ABOUT IDAHO FALLS..😮
THEN NEXT WOULD BE LAS ALAMOS N.M.,THEN OAK RIDGE TN. ,THEN.PLANO TX.😈🏴☠️🌎🇺🇸♥️👌🙏😎😎
If the energy companies want to do nuclear, there is ONE THING they have to do, which they refuse to do… they have to purchase insurance sufficient to cover the cost of a meltdown.
But guess what? THEY REFUSE TO DO IT! Know why? Because it would be too expensive. Because when we figure in the risk and cost of a nuclear accident, NUCLEAR ENERGY IS PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE! Not including the cost of a meltdown - and meltdowns do occur - into the cost equation gives a false sense of security. It makes it seem much cheaper than it really is! And know what happens if they have a meltdown, and they DON’T have insurance? YOU GET LEFT HOLDING THE BAG!
If they don’t have adequate insurance, and there is a meltdown, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR HOUSE, YOUR FARM, YOUR LAND, YOUR BUSINESS, EVERYTHING, WITHOUT COMPENSATION!!! THAT is what the nuclear industry is trying to palm off on the American public. They want to EXTERNALIZE THEIR LEGITIMATE BUSINESS COSTS, which is to say, MAKE YOU ABSORB THEIR LOSSES!
We need to resist it will all our might.
The KEY to a legitimate nuclear industry is insurance adequate to cover the entire cost of a meltdown, a virtual impossibility. The truth of course is that nuclear energy is far too expensive to ensure, because the risk and the permanent losses are gigantic. How much would an area the size of Rhode Island cost to replace, including land, buildings, businesses, infrastructure, machines, etc.? The losses would be so huge, they would be impossible to insure.
Nuclear energy, as it is being done today, is absolutely NOT VIABLE.
they droped the pencil and went home with Plutonium still in the boxes ?
I'm very glad to see how serious they are taking the clean up. Nightmare: how this would be done "somewhere else"!
Ahh . . . Americium. Mostly Am-241 . . . It's in most of your smoke detectors, albeit not much. About 0.29 microgram (37 kBq or 1 microcurie) per sealed source. I LOVE studying radioactivity! Radioactivity is a fascinating field of science, and there are amazing demonstrations you can do with certain radionuclides. Always invest in a Geiger counter and/or a scintillation detector. It's a great hobby or career to go into. What's sad is the paranoia and inherent fear of radioactive materials. Understanding them is what's important. Each radionuclide has it's own "fingerprint" (spectroscopy). Some nuclides produce a low intensity of gamma rays, some very high, and others almost none or none at all. Am-241 most intense gamma ray is @ 59.5 keV (~36% intensity), Pu-239 most intense gamma ray is @ 51.6 keV (~0.027% intensity). Both are alpha emitters. Pu-239 is a nearly pure alpha source, Am-241 is not, because of the gamma intensity difference. It's considered an alpha/low-energy gamma source. Alpha radiation is harmless on the outside. Just don't get any alpha emitters inside you, like natural Radon as one example.
KarbineKyle What about Radon? We have tons of that in the ground where I live. Literally! So much we had to have pros come in and vent gases outside to limit radiation from it!
How are things progressing? An update please.
Google worked five years ago.
I recommend that anyone watching this to research Galen Windsor.
Winsor
The video mentions hockey puck sized discs of plutonium. What does that weigh?
It would make a nice doorstop..
That would be close to a critical mass if not over it.
@@firesalmon7 : it's so interesting to read the answer of an expert like you. Thank you doctor.
I am probably the worst sort of a "homegrown nuclear expert", but as there are always some buts, plainly in wiev there are some ancient demolition techniques employed. Economic feasibility, I know, I know. But here right under my nose, some sneaky ingenious Germans are in the process of tearing down a much less hazardous and overall contaminated facility: The Lubmin NPP. The techniques they are employing are "somewhat" better: cutting elements with plasma arc or band saws, thus creating very little or virtually no dust; sorting the rubble according to it's activity/contamination thus compacting waste without mixing it with ordinary rubble... I see it could very well do in the process of decommissioning Hanford. Now, please, prove me wrong.
mrKoncpom yes. Having used both tools, I think that is a pretty good idea. Though I wouldn't want a leakage of the waste coolant fluid.
Been here done that....
For updated information on PFP, visit www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/Updates_on_Plutonium_Finishing_Plant
its 2016, whats the update?
+furenaef Thank you for your question. We recently published a story on PFP in the latest edition of the EM Newsletter. energy.gov/em/articles/safety-improvements-project-progress-hanford-site-s-plutonium-finishing-plant
thanks for the update!
they removed taken waste hazards put underground in New Mexico.
kids never eat plutonium
also I wish they wouldn't tear that down its the last piece of ww2 Washington history
The site's B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the Manhattan Project/WWII, is being preserved and is open for public tours in the spring through the fall. The Plutonium Finishing Plant is a historic facility, but there's so much hazardous material (chemical, radiological) in the equipment, and the buildings are so old and costly to maintain, that it's best to clean it out and tear it down.
HanfordSite sweet I will defenitntly check that out
More information on site tours and tours of the B Reactor is posted on our website: www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HanfordSiteTours
omery aguilera Do you understand any of this?
The underground storage areas leaked. There were groundwater issues the entire time I lived in the Seattle area - 36 years worth. The real truth is Hanford cannot be totally cleaned up. You can remove everything that was built there, but the material that leaked out of corroded storage barrels and is now in the ground - there is no way to remove all of that.
Thanks for the efforts of the Cold War Warriors!
Larry Bogart quit the pro nuclear PR gig in the mid '60s to start the Citizens Council; an anti-nuclear power organization. He realized after a close study of nuclear power, how dangerous, expensive, and inefficient (considering the saftey and disposal issues) nuclear power plants are. Unfortunately there wasn't enough wide scale momentum world wide to halt further nuclear power plant construction and have new ones decommissioned. It was reckless and poor judgment of the highest order to go nuclear when 1) no one had any closely researched and verifiable plan on how to store the waste and 2) it's an insanely dagerous way to run steam generators. Would any parent leave their five year old child home alone with matches and unlocked cabinets full of house cleaning fluids? Humans are amazing at science and engineering but in most cases are absolutely awful at understanding how to truly utilize it in the most efficient and best way for the betterment of humankind; and thwarting the attempts of sinister people that only seek to profit from it for long term financial gains and power. Now we're totally screwed. Fukushima, the Hanford plant...and so on.
22130tulips Nuclear power is the safest source of power in the world, and has the potential to supply the worlds energy for centuries. Waste can be put very deep down underground in a hole.
@@Gomlmon99deep underground? like the ones that leaked at Hanford?
Idc I'm bored watched first 2 seconds and the fell asleep
That is your problem... not the video's.