Comments on proposed FFTF shutdown milestones revision

by Sabine Hilding, Oct. 8, 2002

Shutting down the FFTF was already decided. Why suddenly this Phoenix out of the ashes?

Years ago, it was feared that preoccupation with the continued FFTF operation issue would take away from focus of the entire cleanup of Hanford Reservation. It's again doing that.

The people whose livelihoods are at stake in the Tri-cities adjacent to the reservation and who are employed by the nuclear industry and those who are involved with the nuclear industry at Hanford should have no say. These people have a vested interest in keeping their jobs, even at the risk of their own health. In this economy that's understandable, but their opinions should not be weighed against the future health of the Columbia River, or even the much greater number of us who live downstream.

Additionally, debate on this issue is smoke screening the fact that now Hanford is becoming a serious nuclear waste dump with STILL no facility for treating the waste that's coming in.

The tragedy is that the site is being abandoned and it is highly unsafe as already toxics are leaking into the Columbia River. The soil is SAND, highly porous, lets water percolate through, and at Hanford irradiated water has hit the vadose zone, that underground stream that flows into the river. At this rate the Columbia Gorge is in danger of being uninhabitable for humans.

Do the people who are opposed to shutting down the FFTF, and who are opposed to being serious about the cleanup of the 177 buried tanks of radioactive toxics leaking into the Columbia, do these people not believe that the site is the worst in the Western Hemisphere and that the Indians in the reach have times ten or more greater risk of cancer than the rest of the population?

The Department of Energy and the United States government owe the people an investment in science – figuring out how to safely treat nuclear waste. This is the massive amount of waste generated in the last fifty years, and continuing to be generated in highly cost ineffective nuclear power plants. (Alternative sources of energy must be invested in and further researched.)

Nuclear power plants mean more waste. No safe technology currently exists for treating nuclear waste. Instead waste is being buried and now suddenly spread all over the place by being trucked across America's highways.

In our nation, we now have huge chunks of uninhabitable land. This is in the last fifty years! This is abandoned land that cannot be lived on, grazed, hiked on, built on, walked on. The habitable land of America is shrinking with each nuclear power plant left in operation. Our great country has misguidedly allowed more power plants than any other nation on earth on its soil within its borders. The amount of such bad land is increasing. For the United States, the real nuclear threat is from within.