5 ms·
The US is going to have to really come to grips with the fallout (heh) of its nuclear weapons programs. If you've never paid attention to how abysmally the US
by indrora 2y ago
The US is going to have to really come to grips with the fallout (heh) of its nuclear weapons programs.
If you've never paid attention to how abysmally the US has handled its nuclear waste management for the weapons programs, check out Rocky Flats and the like. Any time "whoops we lost track of like, 4 pounds of plutonium" isn't seen as an all out scramble you know you're dealing with the US nuclear weapons program.
The road ahead is going to be long and painful: https://www.kunm.org/public-health-new-mexico/2016-09-06/lanls-long-environmental-cleanup https://www.kunm.org/public-health-new-mexico/2016-09-06/lan...
Anyone curious about such things in the context of history should check out the work of Martin Pfeiffer: https://deusexatomica.wordpress.com/ https://deusexatomica.wordpress.com/
- wkat4242 2y agoThey were also really lax with the safety of the Pacific island natives where they tested their later bigger stuff :( At Los Alamos it doesn't even feel as bad because they didn't fully know how bad it was, it was in the middle of a world war and it was their own territory they were polluting.
- defrost 2y agoThe bulk of the spillage didn't originate "in the middle of a world war" though: Until 1963, the Los Alamos national laboratory spit radioactive waste into a nearby canyon as the Department of Defense developed the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The area became so saturated in toxic waste that it was dubbed Acid Canyon. Three bombs and a few partials were produced during WWII, in 1950 there was barely 200 or so in the US, by early 1960 the number was in the thousands, possibly low tens of thousands.
- wkat4242 2y agoGood point. I made an incorrect assumption there.
- bsder 2y agoSee also: NUMEC in Pennsylvania https://www.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Releases/News-Release-Article-View/Article/1661450/corps-greenlights-350-million-radiological-waste-clean-up-contract-for-shallow/ https://www.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Releases/News-Release-...