WTP: An Extended Definition
by Thea Hall
The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the WTP, is a large-scale nuclear waste disposal project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection (ORP) and is being built and designed by the engineering firm Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI) at the Hanford Site in eastern Washington. The plant will treat 53 million gallons of nuclear waste and stabilize it by transforming it into glass.
Most people outside of the nuclear industry know very little about the WTP. The project is a complex endeavor as its enormous title suggests. To help form a clear understanding of the WTP and its goals, this report will attempt to define the plant, and the concepts therein, by examining each part of the title-that is, nuclear tank waste at Hanford, nuclear waste immobilization, and nuclear waste treatment.
Hanford Tank Waste
Double-shell and single-shell tanks where nuclear waste is stored at the Hanford Tank Farms.
As part of the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons for World War II, the Army Corps of Engineers swooped down on the scrublands of southeastern Washington along the Columbia River and evacuated the town of Hanford. The Corps immediately set to work building a nuclear site and manufacturing plutonium for atomic weapons. Plutonium produced at Hanford went into an atomic bomb called Fat Man which was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945 and hastened the end of WWII. With the success of the nuclear bombs and the onset of the Cold War, the nuclear weapons program expanded at Hanford and continued until the Cold War ended in 1989.
Plutonium production at Hanford lasted nearly 50 years, and during that time millions of gallons of nuclear waste were generated and dumped into 177 storage tanks (Hanford Tank Farms) that were built to last only 20-40 years. Each tank holds a different mix of chemicals, and scientists are uncertain as to what the mixture is composed of since few records were kept on the types or amounts of chemicals deposited, which is one of the dangers of trying to treat the tank waste (more on this later). Furthermore, little regard was paid to the future handling and storage of the waste, and now some of the tanks are beginning to leak. The leaking waste is not only contaminating the nearby soil, but it is contaminating the Columbia River and everything downriver from it, right down to Portland, Oregon.
Immobilizing Nuclear Waste
The danger of nuclear waste is that it is radioactive, meaning the atoms have an unstable nucleus-they are insecure and needy and want to leap out and join other atoms to stabilize themselves by releasing energy (in the form of subatomic particles or gamma waves). Any carbon life forms (e.g., you or me) that get near this energy, known as ionizing radiation, are susceptible to having their cells change. The cells will either repair themselves, mutate, or die. To keep the frenetic waste in a relatively permanent “timeout,” scientists discovered that the waste can be successfully combined with resins and silica and turned into glass. Once the nuclear waste is in its immobilized glass form, it is fairly innocuous. This process of turning nuclear waste into glass is known as vitrification and will be the principal manufacturing process at the WTP.
Nuclear Waste Treatment
WTP under construction.
The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant is still being constructed; and once it is built, the main facilities will be an analytical laboratory, a waste pretreatment facility, a high-level radioactive waste facility, and low-activity radioactive waste facility. When the plant is fully operational, it will treat several hundred gallons of waste each day.
Waste treatment will begin after the waste is extracted from the underground storage tanks at the Hanford Tank Farms and piped to the WTP Pretreatment Facility. From there, it will get separated into three main catagories: non-radioactive waste (e.g., acids, bases, organic substances), low-activity radioactive waste, and high-level radioactive waste. The main characteristics differentiating the two radioactive wastes are that the high-level waste is mostly solid and is composed of radionuclides with a long half-life which is the time it takes for half of a radioactive element to decay. Low-activity waste is mostly liquid and dissolved solids with a shorter half-life. However, both types of wastes are a mixture of different radioactive chemicals with varied characteristics.
After being pretreated, glass-forming agents will be added. Since the chemistry of each batch of waste varies, scientists will have to carefully analyze the content and then determine the right amount and type of glass-forming ingredients to add. It will take a careful cook to produce the exact recipe. The wrong combination of ingredients could result in the product not solidifying, and thus remaining unstable. (Interestingly enough, one of the ingredients in the glass recipe is sugar).
WTP process diagram.
The glass produced will not be a decorative type of glass or some type of functional building material as many people picture in their minds when they hear of “turning nuclear waste into glass.” It is not like turning plastic pop bottles into railroad ties. No, after the waste and glass-formers are mixed and heated up, the molten liquid will be poured into long cylindrical metal containers. Afterward, the containers of waste will be cooled, swabbed down, loaded onto trucks, and shipped to a permanent nuclear storage facility where they will remain in repose for thousands of years.
The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant is slated to begin production in 2019 and complete treatment and immobilization of all tank waste by 2047. It will not only be the largest glass-making facility in the world, but the largest radioactive waste treatment plant in the world.
Special Diet to Prevent Radiation Sickness was Discovered in Japan During WWII
by Thea Hall
Fat Man, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in August, 1945.
It is something of a miracle to most people that after an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, staff members at St. Francis’s Hospital located just one mile from the epicenter of the blast suffered no effects of radiation. Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D., who was director of the Department of Internal Medicine at St. Francis’s Hospital, thought his people would have a chance to survive the fallout and remain healthy if they avoided all sugar and followed a diet of miso soup, unrefined brown rice, and sea vegetables (seaweed). He gave the kitchen staff strict orders to prepare this food to everyone in the hospital, and he not only kept his staff healthy, but improved the condition of all the patients.
A diet made up of miso soup, brown rice, and sea vegetables is the cornerstone for what is known as the macrobiotic diet. Since the remarkable story of Dr. Akizuki and other similar testimony, scientists have studied some of the aspects of the macrobiotic diet, namely miso soup and seaweed, to understand the effects that they may have in preventing radiation sickness.
Miso Soup
A bowl of miso soup. Miso soup can increase the body's resistance to radiation sickness.
Miso soup is made from a fermented soybean paste called miso. Some of the richest miso has been fermented for 20 years or more. It is filled with bacteria cultures which help the body break down and digest important nutrients and is usually the first course of a meal.
The exact connection between miso and its ability to help prevent radiation sickness is not entirely understood; yet in several studies at Hiroshima University, it was shown to eliminate radiation from the body, relieve liver cancer, and make the body more resistant to radiation. Professor Watanabe at the cancer and radiation research center at the university conducted a study using radiation and miso on mice. He localized his study to cells of the small intestine. Then he divided 40 mice into two groups. One group, he fed miso and the other group, he fed a normal diet without miso. He then exposed the mice to a lethal dose (for humans) of radiation-10 curies. Only 9 percent of the mice in the non-miso group survived; whereas, 60 percent of the mice given miso survived. The study showed that miso helped make the body 5 times more resistant to radiation.
Sea Vegetables
Wakame sea vegetable. Sea vegetables such as Wakame bind with heavy metals and help eliminate them from the body.
Just about every type of seaweed, or sea vegetable, is edible with some being more delectable and more beneficial than others. Notable sea vegetables such as wakame, kombu, nori, kelp, dulse, and arame are not only filled with 77 essential minerals that are easy for the body to digest, but can bind and neutralize harmful radioactive metals such as strontium-90, cesium, and plutonium and help eliminate them from the body.
Dulse sea vegetable.
In a study at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, researchers discovered that sodium-alginate, found in brown sea vegetable such as kombu, was very effective in reducing the radioisotope strontium-90 by 50 and 80 percent. Strontium-90 is known to pool in the bones and to destroy the white blood cells of the bone marrow, and it is found in nuclear fallout and power plant leaks. Plutonium is another radioactive metal used in nuclear bombs and reactors. It is especially dangerous when it becomes airborne in the form of plutonium oxide. Yet, dulse, a dark red sea vegetable harvested from the Atlantic Ocean, has been discovered to effectively bind with and neutralize plutonium. Also, blue-green algae, such as spirulina, were shown to be effective at binding with cesium. Cesium is another radionuclide that is a known by-product of plutonium manufacturing. It is linked to causing leukemia, liver cancer, and nasal cavity cancer.
Sugar and Other Foods
Eating sugar and other refined foods was forbidden by Dr. Akizuki at St. Francis’s Hospital. He claimed that sugar destroyed the blood. Plenty of studies have been done on the negative effects of sugar to support his claim. The doctor promoted unrefined or unpolished brown rice which the hospital had on supply along with a plentiful supply of seaweed and miso. Dr. Akizuki was aware of the health benefits of miso even before the bombing, and it was a staple food for him and his staff. He also added to the diet Hokkaido pumpkin and sea salt. The special diet he prescribed his patients and staff was minimal, yet life-sustaining.
In his article, “How We Survived Nagasaki,” from the East West Journal, December 1980, Tatsuichiro Akizuki, M.D. writes:
“The dietary method made it possible for me to remain alive and go on working vigorously as a doctor. The radioactivity may not have been a fatal dose, but thanks to this method, Brother Iwanaga, Reverend Noguchi, Chief Nurse Miss Murai, other staff members and in-patients, as well as myself, all kept on living on the lethal ashes of the bombed ruins. It was thanks to this food that all of us could work for people day after day, overcoming fatigue or symptoms of atomic disease and survive the disaster free from severe symptoms of radioactivity.”
The following is a list of articles on the studies discussed above.
S.C. Skoryna et al., “Studies on Inhibition of Intestinal Absorption of Radioactive Strontium,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, 91:285-88, 1964.
Y. Tanaka et al., “Studies on Inhibition of Intestinal Absorption of Radio-Active Strontium,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, 99:169-75, 1968.
“Miso Protects Against Radiation,” Yomiuri Shinbin, Daily Business and Technology Newspaper, July 16, 1990.
“People Who Consume Miso Regularly Are More Resistant to Radiation,” Nikan Kogyo Shinbin, Daily Business and Technology Newspaper, July 25, 1990.