January 22, 2009

World's oldest sample of weapon's grade plutonium has been identified - retrieved from a rusty safe at the bottom of a waste pit during clean up excavations.
posted by polychrome 15 years ago
  • So the safe was uncovered in 2004 - I wonder what processes they have in place to deal with what they find. In one of the photos there's a guy standing around in ordinary work gear and hard hat. Is it really that safe? And let's not get started on the awesomeness of throwing radioactive materials in a safe and burying them. Good thinking, 1950s!
  • If I read things correctly, it was the safe itself that was disposed of because it was radioactive; its contents were more or less along for the ride.
  • A scary bloody place, Hanford, rife with bureaucratic mismanagement, corporate greed and pork-barrel politics.
  • Oh, yeah, we really need to switch from oil to nuclear--mainly because we're so smart at disposing of the waste. Of course, we're now so careful with our environment, and with your typical corporate exec in charge, what could possibly go wrong? Hey, no prob, as long as it's NIMBY! *sarcasmometer chatters, pegs into the red*
  • You liberals always start clucking gibberish and flapping your useless wings when anyone mentions safe, clean and puissant NUCLEAR power - the saviour of tomorrow. Yet whene'er the mighty sun rolls back the hideous night and triumphs unto the golden morning, you all want to be the first to cock-a-doodle-doo! Newsflash, Chicken Little: the SUN is a gigantic NUCLEAR furnace. And if it's good enough for Amon-Ra, its good enough for America. So just bury your little feathery head under your wing and keep dreaming about tasty seeds and grains. Those of us who aren't frightened of a little radioactivity will be responsible for energy policy, and because we all glow in the night now and have grown weird extra limbs from hanging out at the power plant we can work more efficiently than normal people too.
  • *clones mutant admins*
  • Now we have a whole plant full of dirty nuke pollution to deal with, possibly as a monument to... to what?
  • Monument to... Greed and stupidity? I can't believe anyone could read this and think nuclear power is the way to go forward.