The US buried millions of gallons of wartime nuclear waste - Doge cuts could wreck the cleanup

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/us-government-nuclear-waste-doge

The US buried millions of gallons of wartime nuclear waste – Doge cuts could wreck the cleanup

Hanford made the plutonium for US atomic bombs, and its radioactive waste must be dealt with. Enter Elon Musk

Andrew Buncombe in Richland, Washington
Thu 15 May 2025 09.00 EDT

In the bustling rural city of Richland, in south-eastern Washington, the signs of a nuclear past are all around.

A small museum explains its role in the Manhattan Project and its “singular mission – [to] develop the world’s first atomic bomb before the enemy might do the same”. The city’s high school sports team is still known as the Bombers, with a logo that consists of the letter R set with a mushroom cloud.

Richland lies just 30 miles from the Hanford nuclear site, a sprawling plant that produced the plutonium for America’s atomic weapons during the second world war – and later the bomb dropped over Nagasaki. Over the decades, thousands of people in the Tri-Cities area of southern Washington worked at the plant, which shuttered in 1989.

But a dark legacy of Hanford still lingers here: vast amounts of highly radioactive waste nobody is quite sure what to do with.

Residents have long spearheaded an operation to deal with 56m gallons of nuclear waste left behind in dozens of underground tanks – a cleanup that is expected to cost half a trillion dollars and may not be completed until 2100. The government has called it “one of the largest and most expensive environmental cleanup projects worldwide”.

In recent weeks, what has already been a costly and painstakingly slow process has come under renewed scrutiny, following an exodus of experts from the Department of Energy (DoE) that is overseeing the cleanup being executed by thousands of contract workers.

According to local media, several dozen staff, who reportedly include managers, scientists and safety experts, have taken early retirement or been fired as part of a broader government reduction overseen by Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency”. The government has refused to provide a specific figure for how many people involved with cleanup efforts have left. The top DoE manager at the Hanford site, Brian Vance, who had many years of experience, resigned at the end of March without giving a reason.

… more …

[John1956PA]

1. We are in apocalyptic times.

[Thunderbeast]

2. It is inevitable that the radioactive plume will eventually reach the Columbia River.

Trump is clearly not interested in protecting those of us who live downstream from Hanford. In the haste to build the bombs that ended the war with Japan, the scientists of the day left the problem of waste management to future generations. The tanks ARE leaking. The radioactive effluent is heading toward the Coumbia.

I live downstream. I fear for the damage this will cause to my community.

Oregon and Washington are deep blue states... far away from Florida. Trump does not give a damn about what happens here. No opportunities for grift.

[cbabe]

3. Radioactive Waste Still Flooding Columbia River, EPA Says/2017

Courthouse News Service
https://www.courthousenews.com › radioactive-waste-still-flooding-columbia-river-epa-says

Radioactive Waste Still Flooding Columbia River, EPA Says

The stretch of river adjacent to the Hanford nuclear facility, called the Hanford Reach, was declared a national monument in 2000 by then-President Bill

…

The Hanford Project
https://hanfordproject.com › columbia.html

RELEASES: Columbia River - Hanford Project

Radioactive contamination introduced into the Columbia River affected a variety of aquatic animals and plant life. Algae, insects, fish, waterfowl, and ot

…
rense.com
https://rense.com › general66 › dms.htm

Hanford, WA Tests Find Plutonium In Fish, Mulberry Trees - rense.com

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) and Boston Chemical Data Corporation issued a study that includes the first reports of plutonium in clams and

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(For starters)

[NNadir]

4. I'm very familiar with the science of Hanford and have written about it here.

The claim is bullshit and nonsensical.

It would be interesting if people were as interested in say, extreme global heating and the release of neurotoxic heavy metals like lead and mercury as they are in worrying about a few atoms of plutonium.

Hanford is proving to be an Oklo redux, which is good news.

Money squandered to clean it up will save very few lives since few lives are at risk. We could save far more lives by spending the money on serious health risks, for just one example, endemic PFAS contamination, among a million other things.

If the world needs anything right now, it would be more, not less, plutonium. Plutonium mysticism is part of the reason the planet is bursting into flames.