Uh Oh — Missouri Trash Fire Could Ignite World War II Atomic Waste

[n2doc]

Near St. Louis, Missouri, there’s a landfill. And in this Bridgeton Landfill there’s nuclear waste dating back to the Manhattan Project, which produced America’s 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 — they’re currently 1,000 feet apart — are … well, dire, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Government officials have quietly adopted an emergency plan in case the smoldering embers ever reach the waste, a potentially “catastrophic event” that could send up a plume of radioactive smoke over a densely populated area near the city’s main airport.

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]

1. They might have to find someplace else to hold the World Series, then

Why wasn't this immediately classified as a Superfund waste site and put under federal jurisdiction?

[hunter]

8. It's been a superfund site since 1990 and the Federal Government has taken responsibility for it.

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.

The wastes became an issue briefly in 1946, when reporters here asked questions about the trucks that were hauling dirt from the plant to land bordering the airport. The concerns disappeared after the Government and Mallinckrodt said the wastes were ''not radioactive or otherwise dangerous.''

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]

2. Uh oh...

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]

3. More from the article:

"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 landfill’s 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]

4. Here's a really good article from St Louis Public Radio from 2014 about this

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]

5. Which raises once more the key question

Are we stupid, or what?

[Wilms]

6. That question was answered.

Yes.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Well, I generally lean toward ignorant, short-sighted and lazy, rather than stupid

After all, it took a fair deal of intelligence to create that waste.