Aging Hanford tank is leaking radioactive waste into the ground, feds say

This is a shame, but not very surprising. The area around the reactor is a protected wildlife reserve, but the Columbia River Valley is a bit of an elegiac place to visit. It feels like a gorgeous area that has been used as a dumping ground for decades.

None of the individual projects that were erected seem terribly egregious. There's the old nuclear reactor that the article discusses, but that's fairly normal. The huge series of hydroelectric dams isn't good for the ecosystem, but it's not an awful compromise for the power they provide. The sea of red lights eminating from the windmill farms look creepy at night, but they're not too obtrusive. The military firing range isn't loud on most days, but the freight rail tracks are.

All of those individual projects add up. You can't roam very far, and if you visit the cultural centers of the native tribes in the area, they tell a very sad story which extends well into the present. And those cultural centers were typically funded by the power companies as a sort of low-key bribe to grease their projects' approval and improve their public image.