Girl's Cancer Leads Mom to Discover over 50 Sick Kids Near Nuclear Lab | Hacker News Reader

Girl's Cancer Leads Mom to Discover over 50 Sick Kids Near Nuclear Lab

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62 pointsvoisin11 comments

History of contamination on the site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#...

> In an article in the Ventura County Star, James Palmer, a former SSFL worker was interviewed. The article notes that "of the 27 men on Palmer's crew, 22 died of cancers."

> A worker disposes of toxic chemicals by blowing up full barrels with a rifle shot (the reaction to the shot caused an explosion).

What’s the reasoning behind this? A childish fantasy that the chemicals evaporate into nothing and cease to exist?

> What’s the reasoning behind this? A childish fantasy that the chemicals evaporate into nothing and cease to exist?

How is it different from a chimney? You’re just blowing waste away from yourself so you don’t have to care about it anymore.

Pure sodium reacts rather violently with water. It might make sense to remove that hazard by allowing the violent reaction to take place where and when you want it to happen. It would be similar to neutralizing a bomb by blowing it up under controlled conditions.

Video of kids throwing sodium in water: https://youtu.be/NTFBXJ3Zd_4

edit: in this case the sodium was radioactive though, so blowing it up seems... not good.

The reckless and insane behavior of the employees looks like cheap TV comedy.

Using the break time to fish in ponds with toxic products until the water boils? And then eating the floating fish? And doing that in the same ponds again and again?

Wow

Those employees had a managenent.

Ah sorry, i thought it is about Volkswagen /s

How did anyone allow residential zoning anywhere near that place? Until it's thoroughly cleaned, nobody should be allowed to live anywhere near that place. How was this not cleaned decades ago?

This is a particularly egregious example (and unusual because it involves DOE) but if you browse the US “Brownfields” Superfund sites[1] you’ll find all kinds of crazy and reckless behavior relating to land contamination. Most of the people carrying out the orders in the 50s, 60s, and 70s just didn’t know any better. But some of the people from the 80s and 90s who did know (or should have known) better just didn’t care.

There’s one site in Montana called Yankee Doodle Tailings pond from an old (I think) copper mine and the “pond” is highly contaminated with heavy metals. Every once in a while the Montana Fish & Wildlife will frantically try to alert residents who hunt not to eat any $bird they might have killed recently because a mass die-off means the flock stopped at the “pond” and was poisoned.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites

HN readers love to opine on how "safe" nuclear is so I have my popcorn ready for this thread

> the lab was the location of one of the nation's largest — and least known — nuclear accidents that occurred 1959 when one of the facility's ten sodium nuclear reactors experienced a partial meltdown, releasing enormous amounts of radiation into the surrounding environment.

“In 2002, a Department of Energy (DOE) official described typical waste disposal procedures used by Field Lab employees in the past. Workers would dispose of barrels filled with radioactive sodium by dumping them in a pond and then shooting the barrels with rifles so that they would explode and release their contents into the air.[29] Since, the pit has been remediated by having 22,000 cubic yards of soil removed down 10-12 feet to bedrock.[29]

On 26 July 1994, two scientists, Otto K. Heiney and Larry A. Pugh were killed when the chemicals they were illegally burning in open pits exploded. “

… I think there’s more here than just the reactor meltdown.

And also, this was in 1959. Compare that to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springhill_mining_disasters. “Safe” is relative

If you still have the popcorn handy, here’s other stuff they did with Uranium in the ‘50s. Atomic energy science kits for kids

  https://spectrum.ieee.org/fun-and-uranium-for-the-whole-family-in-this-1950s-science-kit

Now, after you enjoyed the fun and the popcorn, I might point out that we are not in the 1950s anymore.

The safety of nuclear energy is something regulated by the NRC. I have never heard anyone accusing the NRC for being lax.

Here’s a link with the NRC approval of NuScale’s SMR reactor

  https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/nuscale.html

If you browse through those links you will find out the approval consists in a few thousand pages. Only the requests for additional information form a list of 149 pages, at about 10-20 requests per page

https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/new-licensing-file...

A very conservative estimate would put the regulatory effort at a few hundred thousand man-hours of work, and the work on NuScale’s side to be in the millions of man-hours.

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