October 26th, 2009, 11:58 PM
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WW2F Veteran
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 2,286
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What Dangers Lurk in WWII-Era Nuclear Dumps?
"Here’s one direct and obvious effect of the economic stimulus package passed in February: The toxic sites where scientists ushered in the nuclear age are getting cleaned up. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, a dump that contains refuse of the Manhattan Project and that was sealed up decades ago is finally being explored, thanks to $212 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
But experts aren’t sure what they’ll find inside the dump. At the very least, there is probably a truck down there that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion seared the sky and melted the desert sand 200 miles south of here during World War II [The New York Times]. It may also contain explosive chemicals that could have become more dangerous over the years of burial.
While the Los Alamos dump was alone on a mesa when it was established in 1944, the town has since grown up around it. Today several businesses are across the street from the site, so experts took extra precautions before starting the remediation effort. The team members pored over wartime classified documents and interviewed old-timers to learn what materials might have found their way into the dump, and took soil samples to test their estimates of how much plutonium might be buried there. They debriefed a laboratory worker who, as a young man, once fell into it"
What Dangers Lurk in WWII-Era Nuclear Dumps? | 80beats | Discover Magazine
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Jon
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