For those of you that did not know in the southern part of the state of Washington there is a site called the Hanford site or Hanford Project.
This place was once home to the first nuclear bomb. There they had up to five plutonium processing complexes that produced most of the plutonium during the cold war. This facility spans some 586 square miles and the Columbia River flows along the site for about 50 miles. By 1971, most of the reactors were shut down but they left one running until 1987 to supply electrical power to the local power grid.
Which leads me to the story out of today’s Seattle PI. “What’s up, Doc? Radioactive poop at the Hanford”. One of the companies in charge of the environmental cleanup of the area had to hire a helicopter company to hover 50 feet above the reservation and search a 16 square mile area for radioactive poop.
So, if you are hiking around in south eastern Washington just be careful of what you pickup or as Dave just said step in.
Jock
