Crazy environmental remediation

Being employed in the environmental remediation industry tends to make one more interested in news items and current events about that industry. This article in the Tri-City Herald is about a remediation project that is about to begin near Hanford, Washington (which doesn’t exist anymore according to Wikipedia) that will clean up a burial ground for nuclear waste.

From the article:

Hanford workers are preparing to start next week digging up radioactive and chemical waste that could spontaneously catch fire when exposed to air.

[…]

Workers will be bringing up the barrels one at a time from behind blast shields and wearing full radiation protection gear and supplied air respirators. They’ll also expose no more than four drums at a time during the excavation to limit any potential fire.

Reading that definitely makes me appreciate my job more. The worst we usually have to deal with is particulate matter containing arsenic or lead. Radiation? No thanks!

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