The Cold War's toxic legacy—costly, dangerous cleanups at atomic bomb production sites

[rangerrebew]

The Cold War's toxic legacy—costly, dangerous cleanups at atomic bomb production sites
March 5, 2018 by William J. Kinsella, The Conversation
 

Seventy-five years ago, in March 1943, a mysterious construction project began at a remote location in eastern Washington state. Over the next two years some 50,000 workers built an industrial site occupying half the area of Rhode Island, costing over US$230 million – equivalent to $3.1 billion today. Few of those workers, and virtually no one in the surrounding community, knew the facility's purpose.

The site was called Hanford, named for a small town whose residents were displaced to make way for the project. Its mission became clear at the end of World War II. Hanford had produced plutonium for the first nuclear test in the New Mexico desert in July 1945, and for the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki on Aug. 9.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-cold-war-toxic-legacycostly-dangerous.html#jCp

[Joe Wooten]

That site should have been cleaned up decades ago. Typical fedgov project, take forever and get nothing accomplished. I know guys who have been working on that site cleanup effort for 30 years and are now retired with little to show for it.