The Pros And Cons Of Pu-239

Humans create waste that the Earth cannot recycle quickly, if ever at all. One such product is the plutonium made at the Manhattan Project Hanford Site in what is now known as the Tri-Cities (Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick) area of Washington State. Plutonium 239 is a man-made radioactive chemical created for the plutonium bomb used on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945 to help end World War II. Plutonium 239 (Pu-239) is ”the ninety-fourth element in Mendeleyev's periodic table, is an artificial radioactive nucleus produced in large quantities by reactors when nuclei of uranium 238 capture an extra neutron apiece” (Plutonium 239). Also, “Pu-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years” (Backgrounder on Plutonium), meaning that it will take over 240,000

The Hanford site actively operated for over four decades. The site has 177 underground containment tanks that hold millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste that is a result of the production of Pu-239. In 1987, Westinghouse Hanford Company, responsible for the cleanup of the nuclear waste-storage, discovered a problem with one of the tanks known as 101-SY. The tank should have been regularly venting low levels of hydrogen gas that would have been non-flammable. However, the hydrogen gas was building up in the tank. When the tank did vent, it was releasing flammable levels of hydrogen gas. This became a big concern because if a spark occurred at the time the tank was venting and ignited the gases, the chemical reaction it would cause, could release the nuclear waste into the environment. Scientists and Engineers researched and studied the tank and it’s contents along with devising a plan to solve the issue. They designed and installed a new pump which is still being monitored (Valenti, 1993). Even though the Department of Energy has possibly found a solution for this problem, there are still other environmental concerns with storing the waste, such as tanks corroding and

The damage that would be done if this high-level nuclear waste leaked from the tanks into the ground and seeped into the Columbia River would be extremely detrimental and irreparable. “The waste is stored in large carbon steel tanks that were constructed between 1943 and 1986” (Beavers) that are buried underground. There are 149 single-shell tanks (SST’s) that were built between 1943 to 1964 and there are 28 double-shell tanks (DST’s) that were built between 1968 to 1986. As of 2014, an estimated 67 SST’s are suspected to be leaking and that about 750,000 gallons of waste leaked into the vadose zone, which is the land area that lays atop the Aquifer (Beavers). This should be of great concern to not only the residents of the Tri-Cities and Washington State, but to both the nation and the world. The Hanford site contains about two thirds of the nation’s high-level nuclear waste and the containment tanks are only meant to hold this waste for a temporary amount of time. I majority of the tanks still being used have already exceeded their intended lifespan. All this means that more tanks will corrode and leak. It is only a matter of time before more leaks occur from other tanks and if it has not happened yet, this high-level nuclear waste will seep into the Columbia River and end up in the Pacific Ocean. The global problem with this is amplified by the fact that the lifespan of these