Hanford board against more nuclear waste

The HAB board has joined several other agencies or groups in recommending Hanford be taken off a list of locations the Department of Energy is considering for disposal of the waste. The states of Washington and Oregon already have asked that Hanford be taken off DOE's list.

At Hanford the waste would be disposed of in trenches, vaults or boreholes. The nation's only deep geological repository -- now that the Yucca Mountain, Nev., repository is not moving forward -- is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

However, DOE has agreed to use the New Mexico site only for defense radioactive waste, which would exclude the greater than class C waste. That nondefense waste includes some waste similar to what Hanford now sends to New Mexico.

DOE is considering what to do with 190,000 cubic feet of such wastes stored around the nation, plus 340,000 cubic feet of waste expected to be generated in the next 60 years.

The waste has a high radioactivity of about 160 million curies. In comparison, the 53 million gallons of waste awaiting treatment in Hanford underground tanks have about 190 million curies and the worst of that was to be disposed of in a deep geologic repository.

Much of the radioactivity in the waste being considered to be sent to Hanford is in activated metals from nuclear reactors being decontaminated or decommissioned. It also includes concentrated radioactive materials used medically for diagnosing and treating cancer.

The advisory board believes Hanford is one of the leading alternatives DOE is considering.

But the board has consistently advised against disposal at Hanford of additional waste from elsewhere, the board said in its advice to DOE.

"Under current proposals for disposing of existing Hanford wastes, ground water standards at Hanford will be exceeded for thousands of years," the board told DOE. "Acceptance of additional wastes from offsite would greatly increase and compound those already identified impacts."

The draft Hanford Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement looked at the environmental effects of waste already planned to be disposed of at Hanford. Those impacts should be included in the greater than class C waste study using the more sophisticated modeling for waste migration and radioactivity in the Hanford draft study, the board said.

juegoton.org » The Stress Test as an

The Stress Test as an Efficient Diagnostic Tool in Medicine

The cardiac stress test is the most important tool cardiologists have at their disposal to diagnose any kind of heart disease. When a stress test is performed, a doctor will work with trained technicians to achieve the best results possible. There are several different tests that each have their own individual and highly specific requirements. Stress tests for cardiac disease have degrees of reliability that are influenced by testing and other conditions. The one thing doctors need to find out is how much stress the heart can handle before it is impacted and altered by the stress. The exercise stress test, while best suited for a specific application, is the one that most people are familiar with.

Thallium is one radioactive compound used in nuclear stress tests. Since very small quantities of the substance are used, there is no danger to the body. Also, Thallium will reduce in radioactivity as well as be naturally eliminated from your body in a fairly short time.

However, Thallium is the compound that permits doctors to recreate an accurate image of the size of your heart’s chambers. Doctors can judge the health of your heart based on this information. A doctor can use these representations to determine how strong your heart is and how well it can pump blood. Based on these images, doctors can also tell if the heart is suffering from any damage.

The stress EKG is an extremely practical tool for doctors because it provides information on how the patient’s heart can pump blood. Also, the walls of the heart are visible and the activity can give more info about the problems that might arise. Just like with similar tests, doctors want to know how the heart responds. The EKG is just a simple picture of the activity that is going on while the heart is under stress. The thing that makes this test so advantageous is that it can see problems with blood flow that other tests might not have seen in terms of blockages.

{An electrocardiogram, or EKG, is used during a regular cardiac stress test. There is a little wiggle room for interpretation with this particular device. EKG results can pick up changes that are not at all related to heart disease. Therefore, if there are anomalies in the EKG during the at rest period, then the doctor will have to make a determination about the overall testing process. Most of the time, doctors in this situation will simply order a different type of stress test. That doesn’t change the fact that the traditional stress test is still a reliable choice for most patients.|Another basic type of group testing is the nuclear stress test. This kind of test can be utilized with plenty of radioactive isotopes. The purpose of a nuclear stress test is to envision a healthy heart muscle that works properly. The different areas of the heart will absorb the isotope and thus become more illuminated in an image. The outcome will be to tell which areas of the heart is not getting the right amount of blood. That in turn provides clues as to the origins of blockage that is restricting blood flow.|Various factors can influence the reliability of the isotope stress test.

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