Govt awards $45B to company treating 50M gallons of leaking radioactive waste

thecooldown.com

11 points·thelastgallon··6 comments

> produced almost two-thirds of the plutonium for the country's nuclear weapons

Nearly every nuclear waste problem is the ghost of a weapons program.

It’s so unfortunate the media insists on lumping energy production and weapons program waste products together.

This is for the Hanford weapons site:

> The 580-square-mile site, located in the state of Washington, produced almost two-thirds of the plutonium for the country's nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.

and not for a (civilian) nuclear power station.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

I wonder when they will finally clean the mess they have done in Marshall Islands.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/25/endless-...

237.75 Per liter, puts the value of treated waste between patchouli and human blood. Not having three eyed salmon in the Columbia is priceless though.

https://gitnux.org/most-expensive-liquids-in-the-world/

Can anyone explain the price? Seems high but I don't know anything about this sort of cleanup.

$1000/gallon isn't cheap but with costs, labor, and profit margin it doesn't strike me as impossible (no more than design agencies charging $200+ an hour to write JS)

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