Strontium-90 Coming to a Great Lake near you

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Strontium-90 Coming to a Great Lake near you

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:23 am

If you follow the nuclear holocaust news you may have noticed me chime in whenever Hanford is mentioned with something to add about New York's West Valley Reservation, the site of the world's only commercial plutonium re-processing plant. Here's the latest about West Valley and it would be wise if you were to take some action to get help us get this place cleaned-up without any further delay.

Strontium-90 Coming to a Great Lake near you

Thursday, February 28, 2013

If you have thought at all about West Valley lately, you probably thought that the problems there were more or less solved after that big project to solidify the high level radioactive waste being stored there. The problem is not solved, not by a long shot, according to the Sierra Club; Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service; Barbara Warren of the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition; Joanne Hameister of the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes and Agnes Williams of the Indigenous Women’s Initiative.

High level radioactive waste being stored in unlined trenches, erosion from torrential rains and a plume of Strontium-90 working its way to Lake Erie are just some of the problems facing the site. Add lack of transparency from the DOE, federal budget cuts to the clean up funding and almost total rejection of citizen and outside scientific input and these dedicated women have an overwhelming problem they have been resolutely working on for years.

Of all the problems facing this site and the people living around it, one of the most serious and pressing is a plume of Strontium-90 slowly flowing underground towards Lake Erie.

Strontium-90 is a radioactive element that acts like calcium in your body. It gets absorbed by your bones and then irradiates your bone marrow for a half of 29.1 years. After 29.1 years, half the Strontium in your bones will have converted Yttrium, the other half stays right in your bones irradiating away. The risk of bone cancer and leukemia are increased with strontium-90 exposure.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/strontium.html

The Strontium 90 migrating towards Lake Erie is from a spill on site and was discovered in the 90's. The image below shows the radioactive plume on the West Vally site. Pink is the most radioactive and 100,000 times hotter (more radioactive) than the rest of the plume. The DOE installed the containment wall in 2010 to keep the radioactivity from migrating to Lake Erie. Obviously it didn't work so well and currently the plume is less than 150 feet from Frank's Creek. Frank's Creek empties into Lake Erie. The DOE is committed to studying this problem until at least 2020.

Image

With the water supply to millions of US citizens, Canadian Citizens and Native Americans at risk, the Sierra Club, Nuclear Information & Resource Service, Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes, Indigenous Women’s Initiative think the DOE's plan to continue studying the problem forever is unacceptable.

They ask your help. Please contact your federal representatives and tell them to Dig It Up!

More about West Valley:

http://www.cectoxic.org/Radioactive.html

http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/decommissioning/decommissioninghome.htm

http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/43501.html

US Dept. of Energy ~ http://tinyurl.com/bxrtocx
~~~~~~~~~
It's quite amazing, really, that after years of presenting them with solid science documenting the dire need for immediate action, that adding a bit of pink coloring to a power point presentation has finally gotten the attention of the US DOE .
We now have their full attention.

If you care at all, please call your representatives and demand they take action now!
Canadians, please call your MPs and a call or two to the US Embassy couldn't hurt.
Clean-Up West Valley Now!
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Re: Strontium-90 Coming to a Great Lake near you

Postby Karmamatterz » Tue Mar 05, 2013 10:36 pm

I am,

Thank you for sharing this. Sheesh, I hadn't ever heard about this place. Where I live, quarter mile from the shores of Lake Erie and 20 mile down wind from Davis Besse, we usually are more focused on giant cracks in reactor containment buildings. I will share this with others. This is bad bad shit, we cannot have our Great Lakes destroyed by this stupidity.
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Re: Strontium-90 Coming to a Great Lake near you

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Mar 05, 2013 11:07 pm

Sorry you had to learn of this horror on these pages, but please do help spread word of this nightmare.

The erosion on-site is extreme and the danger quite real. 600,000 of highly radioactive Strontium 90 have leaked. The site so radioactive much of the clean-up, a 60 year long project once begun, must be done robotically. The last links given should provide you with more information.

The 'containment' wall was a foolish waste of time and money. If you know how to read topographical maps you can see the ravines on the down-slope (Upper right)
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