Atomic Man

April 23, 2018 2:54 PM

The cleanup of Hanford continues, and continues to be controversial. It's a good time to remember Harold McCluskey, perhaps.

"In seconds, McCluskey received 500 times the amount of radiation considered safe over an entire lifetime, thousands of times greater than anyone contaminated at Fukushima, and greater than many of those who responded to Chernobyl.

He was so radioactive that his body set off Geiger counters 50 feet away."

posted by OneSmartMonkey (11 comments total)

Also don't forget that the state has literally had to sue the federal government to get them to do their fucking job on cleaning this up properly, considering it was a federal project. (They still really aren't doing their fucking job, despite the suit, that was back in 2014)

And yes, we sued them because this has been going on since fucking 2011, when they DOE said they couldn't possibly meet the deadlines they had set for cleanup.
posted by deadaluspark at 3:11 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]

I like to look for weasel words/phrases when reading articles like this. And ho-boy, it's got them.

In their statement, Energy Department officials said they are "concerned about any health consequences, long-term or short-term, that any of the workers on site face at any time. We are addressing workers' concerns by being as open and transparent with our workers as possible about what we are doing to stabilize the situation."

Emphasis mine.

Beyond their weasel words, instead of addressing their concerns through action and preventive measures, they are addressing their concern with (censored) communications.

It's time like this when the Department of Energy needs brave and powerful leadership. (oh, fuck).
posted by el io at 4:15 PM on April 23, 2018 [6 favorites]

An investigation into the explosion confirmed that the resin mixture had become unstable exactly as McCluskey feared, and the government finally settled in 1977 for $275,000 plus lifetime medical expenses... However, according to McCluskey’s wife, Ella, the government balked at paying the settlement. A former teacher and nurse, Ella cleverly told them they wouldn't be able to do an autopsy when he died. They paid up pretty quick after that.

Thanks DoE, for never disappointing.
posted by Marky at 6:04 PM on April 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

Holy shit I didn't know anything about Hanford. Terrifying. And enraging.
posted by emjaybee at 7:08 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Dad worked there until his forced medical retirement. Firefighting out there is arguably the single main factor in his early death (oddly enough due to overexposure to diesel fumes. Don't breathe firetruck exhaust, kids). His father worked out there and had numerous cancers that could also be attributed to exposures on the site. (This being why Inslee fast-tracked efforts to get workers on the site better care and support for their exposure issues)

The downwinders in the Tri-Cities (Richland/Kennewick/Pasco for folks not from around here) have won at least one major lawsuit proving exposure issues in the Columbia (though I'm given to understand that was cleaned up as a part fo that process).

Hanford has been an ongoing problem for cleanup for decades. Certainly for all of my lifetime.
posted by Archelaus at 7:13 PM on April 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

And probably will be for all of your descendants' lifetimes.
posted by bz at 9:32 PM on April 23, 2018

I have to say, nuclear waste is a nightmare to deal with, as I understand. It's the kind of serious, expensive, long-term environmental project capitalist governments hate to deal with. I fervently believe the only real chance we have of having these issues sorted out is to change the governments we have. Any socialist group I've engaged with is worried, because it's real people who can't afford to move away who bear the brunt of the suffering.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 3:01 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have to say, nuclear waste is a nightmare to deal with, as I understand. It's the kind of serious, expensive, long-term environmental project capitalist governments hate to deal with. I fervently believe the only real chance we have of having these issues sorted out is to change the governments we have. Any socialist group I've engaged with is worried, because it's real people who can't afford to move away who bear the brunt of the suffering.

Hanford was a government site, it was built during the Manhattan Project.

Also Chernobyl, Kyshtym?
posted by atrazine at 6:28 AM on April 24, 2018

Yes, government sites.
I know it can't be a new concept that not everyone considers the USSR to be an exemplar of good socialist government in practice.
Maralinga is one I like to throw out there, as less people have heard of it.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 10:36 AM on April 24, 2018

TBH, it's a goddamned miracle and a testament to how radioactive contamination isn't really any more dangerous than long lived synthetic chemicals like PCBs or the pollution we city dwellers inhale all day every day that the ridiculously lax attitude toward contamination has killed as few as it has, even among people who worked at Hanford, SRS, Rocky Flats, and other nuclear weapons production facilities.

Well, it's really a testament to our bodies being fairly robust against cancer caused by ionizing radiation, thanks to having evolved with cosmic rays and other high energy particles raining down on us constantly.
posted by wierdo at 3:54 PM on April 24, 2018

In fairness, Hanford is a government site which has actually been managed by many different contractors over the years, not by the government directly. This is part of the problem. Consistency has not exactly been a mainstay of developments out there.
posted by Archelaus at 6:13 PM on April 24, 2018