Where did we dump that stuff?
Earliest weapons-grade plutonium found in US dump
21 January 2009 – New Scientist
An old glass jar inside a beaten up old safe at the bottom of a waste pit may seem an unlikely place to find a pivotal piece of 20th century history. But that’s just where the first bulk batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found – abandoned at the world’s oldest nuclear processing site.
And this….
Update: Since publication, Jon Schwantes has discovered that a microgram sample of plutonium produced in 1942 by Glen Seaborg’s group at the University of California in Berkeley is also plutonium-239. The sample discovered at Hanford is technically the second oldest sample of plutonium-239, but remains the earliest produced during the Manhattan Project and the first bulk batch anywhere.
This reads like a Simpson’s episode. I can’t help but wonder what else we’ve waylaid, and where. The ocean? A watershed that supplies water to millions of people? The Arctic/Antarctic, where ice caps are receding? Some of the hair-brained schemes they hatched up in the 1950′s to dispose of nuclear waste, it just leaves me wondering where these nuclear easter eggs will pop up next. And what of the Russians? The French?
Other news source:
Old plutonium found in dump
Weapons-grade material discovered at Hanford nuclear site.
Nature | Geoff Brumfiel
Published online 22 January 2009
