[pault]

When I lived in Seattle I was sitting at a cafe one day and a government motorcade came down the street with an 18 wheel truck carrying a dumbell-shaped canister with a giant yellow nuclear symbol on the side. I've never been able to figure out what they were transporting. Does anybody here know what it might have been? It was post 9/11 so I was surprised they were still moving radioactive material on the surface streets of a major city.

[jhayward]

An RH-72B[1] cask is a container for shipping trans-uranic nuclear waste, probably to the WIPP site.

[1] http://www.wipp.energy.gov/WIPPCommunityRelations/images/pho...

[pault]

That's the one! I can finally put that mystery to rest. :)

[Manglano]

To some extent we are radioactive material on the surface streets of the major cities, because we have consumed soil!! Even our steel tools can be somewhat radioactive, refinement concentrates point sources.

However, containment vessels like that are usually for refined ores, which end up in reactors, smoke detectors, medical devices, radiotherapy machines, you name it. Too expensive and possibly hazardous to airlift.

As far as I know, production of atomic weapons has stopped in this country and we're not even sure if they still work (half-lives--they rot). Could've been materiel for a stewardship program at the Hanford Site, or waste being evacuated from the Hanford Site.

Generally speaking, the remaining atoms transported and transmuted are for peace. That's why Russia brokers Uranium to the States, and why people in Kazakhstan and elsewhere continue to mine fissile ore.

If you were to shut down the remaining fission plants of Planet Earth, civilization as we know it, would end almost immediately, such is our need for these fuels. It would not be pretty--consider the amount of electric heat, the number of electric stoves with 50+ year duty lifetimes. That's why Japan recycles spent fuel at the French reactor.

[willismichael]

Waste from the Hanford Site? Why would it be necessary to transport it through the most populous area of WA state? (I'm asking as somebody who has lived near Hanford as well as in the Seattle metro area)

[seanmcdirmid]

Eh, it also doesn’t make sense since Hanford is a waste storage site...where else could the waste be going, and even if it’s high grade, why does that involve the Pacific Ocean rather than a trip to Utah or neveda in the other direction? I’ll assume that whatever it was, it was unrelated to Hanford, more likely something to do with nuclear submarines or the training reactor they had at UW.

[RosanaAnaDana]

Waste from Hanford would either stay at Hanford or go through Portland. Seattle is way out of the way. Portland much closer.

[acidburnNSA]

Could be related to all the Navy nuclear stuff around town like the shipyard at Bremerton or the Bangor sub base