Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumUh Oh — Missouri Trash Fire Could Ignite World War II Atomic Waste
Near St. Louis, Missouri, theres a landfill. And in this Bridgeton Landfill theres nuclear waste dating back to the Manhattan Project, which produced Americas very first atomic bombs during World War II.
Next to the Bridgeton Landfill is the West Lake landfill. This is a problem because the West Lake Landfill is on fire and that long-burning underground fire is creeping closer to Bridgeton and its nuclear waste, which was illegally dumped there in 1973.
The possible consequences if the blaze meets the radioactive waste theyre currently 1,000 feet apart are
well, dire, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Although the fire at Bridgeton Landfill has been burning since at least 2010, the plan for a worst-case scenario was developed only a year ago and never publicized until this week, when St. Louis radio station KMOX first obtained a copy.
The emergency plan involves building so-called interceptor wells that vent heat and maintain a kind of thermal quarantine line between the fire and the nuclear waste, according to design Website BLDGBLOG.
However, the fire already appears to have circumvented these buffers, the blog notes.
more
http://warisboring.com/articles/uh-oh-missouri-trash-fire-could-ignite-world-war-ii-atomic-waste/
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Why wasn't this immediately classified as a Superfund waste site and put under federal jurisdiction?
hunter
(38,311 posts)It's not exactly nuclear waste, except that the Mallinckrodt Chemical works was refining uranium which was used in the Manhattan Project. It's not enriched Uranium, having no more U-235 than any natural Uranium does. This company had been spreading it's toxic waste products, both radioactive and non-radioactive, around the St. Louis area since it was founded in 1867.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/us/mountain-of-nuclear-waste-splits-st-louis-and-suburbs-888.html
American Indians in the Southwest, are dealing with similar "dirt," the tailings of Uranium mines.
Up until the 'sixties (later in some places) big business didn't think much about toxic waste. Here, have a cigarette, it's not THAT bad, and JOBS! (Much like Chinese industry today.)
It's very likely the crap spewing from the existing landfill fire is as horrible as the uranium and thorium wastes.
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)Well fuck.
Tell us again how anything "nuke" is a good thing.
The monster they created can not be controlled. (or apparently ever properly disposed of)
In over our heads again with the gift that keeps on giving...as in forever.
PearliePoo2
(7,768 posts)"However, the fire already appears to have circumvented these buffers, the blog notes.
For example, some safety reports from the site have allegedly found radiological contamination in trees outside the landfills perimeter, implying that the nuclear waste has already, in at least some capacity, entered the biosphere, and another showed evidence that the fire has moved past two rows of interceptor wells and closer to the nuclear waste.
OnlinePoker
(5,719 posts)On Friday morning, NPR reported that 13 employees at the only dedicated nuclear waste dump in the U.S. had inhaled radioactive material after a major accident earlier this month.
The incident happened at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. It's designed to store radioactive material left over from nuclear bomb production during and after World War II. Radioactive material that dates that far back is frequently called "legacy nuclear waste."
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/confused-about-bridgeton-and-west-lake-landfills-heres-what-you-should-know
pscot
(21,024 posts)Are we stupid, or what?
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Yes.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,938 posts)After all, it took a fair deal of intelligence to create that waste.