Hanford watchdog group reports possible tank leak, DOE says no visual indication of leak

Reports from the watchdog group "Hanford Challenge," says a second double-shelled tank may have a leak.

Executive Director Tom Carpenter says this possible leak of highly-radioactive by-product from the AY-101's inner shell comes only a week after a neighboring tank, AY-102 failed.

In the report, the group says higher-than-normal levels of Cesium-137 and another highly-radioactive by-product were found outside the primary liner of Tank AY-101, which is one of the first of the 28 double-shelled waste tanks at the site.

“There’s no short-term solution to storing this tank waste and these tanks are mostly beyond their design life, and starting to fail have we have seen. Hanford needs to immediately start building new waste tanks, until we can get a waste treatment system up and going,” says Carpenter.

U.S. Department of Energy Office of River Protection, Assistant Manager for Tank Farms, Tom Fletcher says at this point, there is no visual indication of a tank leak today.

Higher-than-expected radioactive readings came back from the AY-101 outer tank earlier this month. Fletcher says crew visual inspections showed no change as compared to 2014 readings.

Fletcher says it is too soon to decide if building new tanks is necessary.

“Clearly, we have to understand where we are today and the cause of this before we jump to what is the path forward,” says Fletcher.

He says there is an engineering evaluation being done to determine the cause of the higher-than-expected reading. They are also planning to do another visual inspection of the tank.

He says at this point there is no concern for the public.