MetaFilter posts tagged with radioactivity

What is green and goes burp in the night?

mrzarquon — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:20:11 -0800

The Hanford Site in SoutheastWashington (located on the Columbia River) is considered the dirtiest place on earth. 177 Underground storage tanks hold over 50 million gallons of radioactive and toxic waste. And they are leaking. Constructed in 1943 as the plutonium production complex for the Manhattan Project, it covers 580 square miles and grew to have 9 nuclear reactors and 5 plutonium processing plants. Poor management by the Department of Energy, and a changing list of contractors competing for the project by lowest bid have left an incredible mess to cleanup. Here is another timeline of events documenting the habitual mis management of the project. It is hard to believe that such a huge environmental disaster waiting to is rarely discussed. If it wasn't for the Hanford Challenge event I was invited to last week, I still would not have known of it. They are a group working to help moderate the discussion between the whistleblowers and the contractors. Hopefully they will complete the cleanup before these signs are out of date. (And more importantly, before the 1 million gallons of contaminated ground water reach the Columbia River). The Burping (in the title) is in reference to the chemical storage tanks which has an amalgam of toxic and radioactive materials, still undergoing chemical reactions and in some cases releasing hydrogen gas. One whistleblower was a chemist who refused to not writeup an employee for smoking as they were monitoring one of the tanks, waiting for a burp. P.S. Did you know the Richland (city local to the Hanford Site) Bombers are a highschool team with a mushroom cloud as their logo?

That beautiful blue glow...

aberrant — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:36:11 -0800

Three Mile Island - a study in bad human interface design. Chernobyl in text, pictures (posted previously), and eyewitness accounts. Those are two of the most famous incidents involving mishaps with radioactive material. There have been many more (see also) including suicides, homicides, assaults, and motives forever unknown. But US citizens need not worry - the NRC is on it. What do you know about radiation poisoning? Take the test.

Speaking of gassing one's own people

letterneversent — Mon, 17 Mar 2003 17:04:51 -0800

Speaking of gassing one's own people: US Government admits it tested nerve gas (sarin and VX) on its own sailors (Project SHAD). This is in addition to the testing of LSD on civilians (MK Ultra), syphilis on 399 black Alabama men (Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment), radioactivity on American GI's (Operation Crossroads), and the secret testing of germ warfare tactics on American cities. It's really no surprise the US government rejected an international ban on biological weapons, and yet we personalize this imminent war with Iraq and claim the justification as the forced disarming of dangerous 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.