Due to the vast hoards of nuclear waste being manufactured by nuclear plants around the country, the U.S. Government built a nuclear waste depository into the side of Mormon Mesa northeast of Las Vegas. The plan was to place the waste into secure containers and bury them and their contents in an area where man has seldom, if ever, traveled. The area chosen is near the area where the Department of Energy used to conduct above ground and below ground nuclear tests, so the landscape is basically polluted anyway.
But, Harry Reid chose to use the proposed site as a political weapon and managed to bring the project to a screeching halt early in the Obama administration. So, there it sits, basically completed and useless.
In the meantime, nuclear plants have been storing their spent fuel rods and other radioactive materials on site in containers that are far less secure and safe. Many scientists warned that it would only be a matter of time before some terrorist tried to steal some of that material or that it would eat through its containment vessels and become dangerous.
As it turns out, the scientists were correct.
Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington State was a plutonium enrichment site used for developing nuclear weapons. In the 1960s, spent fuel rods were put in railroad cars and, once filled,
the railroad cars were wheeled into a tunnel dug into the side of a
hill. The site was shut down in the 1980's.
One of the tunnels has now evidently caved in. While the government has been quick to assert that there is no danger, the entire site, which has been undergoing an extensive cleanup operation with thousands of workers involved, has been evacuated.
There's a huge environmental problem developing here, and we all know who's to blame.
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