SPOKANE — A Hanford watchdog group is complaining that a new deal allows a nuclear waste storage tank to continue leaking for more than a year before its contents are pumped out.
The deal to pump nuclear waste tank AY-102, announced late Monday, is between the U.S. Department of Energy and the state Department of Ecology.
The deal says pumping of the double-walled tank would not begin until 2016, and would take a year to complete.
Gerry Pollet of Heart of America Northwest says every day that the tank leaks creates additional dangers. He says federal and state laws require that leaking tanks must be emptied immediately.
Hanford for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons, and now is engaged in cleaning up the nation’s largest collection of nuclear waste.
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