53 million gallons in danger of leaking

seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/355924_hanford21.html

The most vulnerable point in the United States is the Hanford Nuclear Reservation situated on the banks of the Columbia River. This remnant of the Manhattan Project has hundreds of buried concrete-encased steel tanks filled with radioactive brews that are often too hot and volatile to even analyze. Billions have been spent and squandered while the government has failed to contain the leakage from these tanks. Palliative measures may have prevented leakage into the river but it can and may happen.
The cleanup of Hanford is my sole measure of the environmental concern of each Administration. They have all failed. CarterReaganClintonBushBush. All Failures. Al Gore did nothing. Hot Air. A single bomb dropped anywhere in the reservation would destroy the Columbia River, radioactivate Oregon, Washington and a good piece of the North Pacific. The cleanup of Hanford requires, yes, you got it, a Manhattan Project. It should be THE environmental concern of the next Administration. It should be an issue in every campaign, but it never is. Why? No politician wants to rock the boat. They are happy to get a few billion to pay off the engineering and construction firms who get the contracts which fail to accomplish what is promised. THIS IS A WORLD CLASS DANGER. IT REQUIRES A CABINET OFFICER ASSIGNED FULLTIME.
For more than twenty years the threat and dangers of Hanford have been acknowledged. A lot of money has been spent, some of the most imminent threats have been relieved. The cleanup date for Hanford has now slipped to 2050. This is my measure of how deeply flawed our governance is.
Every time you hear global warming, think how near is the warming of the Columbia River gorge. Some problems are so large government simply ignores them. We are smug about the falling rate of longevity in Russia, largely due to alcoholism and environmental damages inflicted by the mishandling of their nuclear, chemical and other heavy metal industries. It may be irreversible. We have no reason to be smug. A third of the western United States and Canada are threatened too. We dither and risk disaster, intentionally inflicted or caused by our casual arrogance.
CLEAN UP HANFORD