Subject: cleaning up nuclear waste
They talk and talk, but nothing gets done. One project was put on hold because of lax safety standards (in 2012!). Eventually the tanks will leak. Some already are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/0...
Nowhere were the problems greater than at the Hanford Site in Washington State, where engineers sent to clean up the mess after the Cold War discovered 54 million gallons of highly radioactive sludge left from producing the plutonium in America's atomic bombs, including the one dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945.
Cleaning out the underground tanks that were leaching poisonous waste toward the Columbia River just six miles away and somehow stabilizing it for permanent disposal presented one of the most complex chemical problems ever encountered.
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The search for a solution has dragged on so long that there is pressure to produce some result for all the massive spending, even if it does not meet past expectations. That could mark a dramatic retreat from longstanding promises to nearby residents ' who experienced thyroid, reproductive and nervous system tumors linked by researchers to exposure during the era of plutonium production ' that the government would adhere to the highest possible cleanup standards.
What was it Churchill said? Something like "the Americans can be relied upon to do the right thing after they've exhausted all other options". Just spend the money and do it right, before we poison hundreds of thousands of people.