US: Nuclear waste mislabeled at Hanford site via The Seattle Times

As a result, Energy Northwest, the consortium that operates the Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant, has been temporarily barred by state regulators from sending waste to the US Ecology disposal site on leased Hanford land, the Tri-City Herald reported Thursday.

RICHLAND — A shipment of nuclear waste from a commercial power plant located on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state was improperly labeled when it was trucked to a commercial disposal site, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

As a result, Energy Northwest, the consortium that operates the Columbia Generating Station nuclear plant, has been temporarily barred by state regulators from sending waste to the US Ecology disposal site located on leased Hanford land, the Tri-City Herald (http://bit.ly/2pyWwWi ) reported Thursday.

[…]

Energy Northwest is separate from Hanford’s past mission of creating plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons, which ended in the 1980s. Plutonium production left Hanford with the nation’s largest collection of radioactive waste.

The incident occurred when a Nov. 9 shipment from the power plant to the disposal site turned out to be more radioactive than claimed on the shipping manifest, the newspaper said.

[…]

US Ecology surveyed the cask for radiation and determined the radiation was seven times greater than the shipping manifest for the package declared, according to Energy Northwest.

Another error was taking a measurement 6 inches (15 centimeters) away from some of the waste, rather than right against the waste, the report said.

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