Hanford Nuclear Waste

I spent a year of my childhood in Goldendale Washington, downwind from Hanford Nuclear Plant. Like many people raised in that area, I got thyroid cancer at an extremely young age and still suffer from the side effects of it.

I spent another 35 years of my life downriver in Vancouver Washington. Needless to say I was pretty upset why I read that the DOE plans on start shipping large amounts of nuclear waste their again, despite reports that the wastes already there, the same ones that were supposed to be cleaned up long ago, are steadily creeping closer and closer to the Columbia River.

If you’re as upset by this as I am, you might consider going sending this to the DOE.

Dear Friend,

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is already one of the most polluted sites on the planet. Farmers in the region regularly report the birth of three-legged chicks and two-headed calves.

But a new proposal from the Department of Energy would lift the 30-year moratorium on shipping radioactive waste to Hanford from other DOE sites. If this moratorium is lifted, Hanford will become the nation’s radioactive waste dump.

We have until Friday to speak out. The government is accepting public comment until then on the proposal to lift the moratorium. Speak out today and submit your comment opposing the plan to make Hanford America’s radioactive waste dump. Click the link below to submit your comment.

CREDOACTION

UPDATE: Here’s an interestingSeattle Times background article on Hanford and the ongoing cleanup costs.

5 thoughts on “Hanford Nuclear Waste”

  1. Thank you for telling your story.
    I believe you are telling a true story.

    In order to ‘Tell The Truth’ as I see it. My discovery of this word NOMENKLATURA has help me. I write it in caps so as to emphasize it.

    According to the ‘Gospel of Google’; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura,

    “The nomenklatura were a small, elite subset of the general population ……….who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries’ activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc. The NOMENKLATURA was analogous to the ruling class. ….. The term was popularized by the Soviet dissident Michael Voslenski, who in 1970 authored a book titled NOMENKLATURA: The Soviet Ruling Class (Russian: Номенклатура. Господствующий класс Советского Союза).”

    The word NOMENKLATURA is a good one as it best describes the privileged class of people in the nuclear establishment of any country, even the US.

    Question:
    How are the “NOMENKLATURA” of the US, British, French, or even Canadian, etc Nuclear Establishments different than the “NOMENKLATURA” of,the old Soviet and now Russian, the Chinese, the North Korean, etc. Nuclear Establishments?

    The Answer:
    There really are none that I can see, We are talking about the same class or caste of privileged people in both cultures, only the briefcases they carry are from different manufacturers. (The NOMENKLATURA of the now defunct Chernobyl Station did not buy their briefcases Los Alamos, NM)

    In your the NOMENKLATURA of the U S nuclear establishment could be an obstacle to the US public’s right to know.

    Have you ever had these thoughts about your country’s Nuclear Establishment?

    I have.

  2. “Farmers in the region regularly report the birth of three-legged chicks and two-headed calves.”

    Aggreed, Hanford is polluted and needs to be cleaned up. However, If your going to be an activist and impact change, at least tell the truth. There have been no 3-legged chickens and two headed calves born in Benton or Franklin County. Additionally, according to a survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association “showed no general increased risk of death from cancer for people living in 107 U.S. Counties containing or closely adjacent to 62 nuclear facilities”. FACT: According to data from the Nactional Cancer Institute, cancer rates (all types, per 100,000) in Benton and Franklin Counties are BELOW both the state and national averages….and “downwind” counties of Yakima and Klickitat are among the lowest in the state.

  3. We were at the northern edge of the “shadow”, north of Spokane, not as exposed as others, but still exposed. We also grew up on farm raised food and milk, grown in that area.

    My mother didn’t have thyroid cancer, though she did have hypothyroidism, and ended up with colon cancer.

    Haven’t a clue if I have anything: don’t have medical insurance to get anything checked.

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