It’s been reported that $71 million would be cut from the administration’s budget to perform environmental cleanup work along the Columbia River in Hanford’s 2015 fiscal request.
Thinking about Washington state’s big pollution problem, I tried searching the Internet for any company in the whole world, actually and currently, turning nuclear waste into glass for profit. The results were very confusing. I did find page after page about how seemingly easy this process is, and how it will reduce the amount of waste by 90 percent.
There are articles about how Bechtel National began construction of a vitrification plant at Hanford in 2001. It was scheduled to be operational by 2011, but then encountered serious problems. There are stories about companies currently developing waste to glass, and saying their vitrification process will be better than others.
Decades of worsening nuclear waste storage containers, billions already spent on the Hanford nuclear waste dump, and billions more talking about turning nuclear waste into a glass thingy. Does it really work? Is there an estimate of how many pounds of waste is currently being vitrified worldwide?
