Word: watered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Ohio's Feed Materials Production Center in Fernald, a uranium-processing plant, the innocent-sounding name and the red-and-white checkerboard design on a water tower led some nearby residents to think it produced cattle feed or pet food. They have learned, to their dismay, that not only was the facility fabricating uranium rods for nuclear-reactor fuel cores and components for warheads, but one of its even scarier outputs was radioactive pollution. Marvin Clawson, 59, who lives near the plant, blames its operators for the fact that his wife Doris has had surgery for cancer three times...
...admits, "It's not too good for the fish around here either." The agency also concedes that a network of shallow aquifers under the vast acreage is contaminated with radioactive compounds. A deeper aquifer contains toxic, nonradioactive materials. The only argument: whether this supply is the source of drinking water for the surrounding area...
...weapons industry's most disturbing blunders have been exposed. Congressional investigators have turned up internal memos from the facility's manager, E.I. du Pont de Nemours, citing numerous incidents over three decades. On May 10, 1965, operators ignored a loud alarm for 15 minutes. Then they saw water spilling across the reactor- room floor. Fully 2,100 gal. of fluid had leaked out of the reactor, leaving the level of coolant too low. The reactor shut itself down automatically...
...reactors before the crisis at Three Mile Island. Those were in the pioneering days of nuclear weaponry. Besides the partial melting of a fuel rod in 1970, a more recent near calamity took place in March 1982, when a technician at one of the Savannah River reactors left a water valve open, and for twelve hours the undetected flow flooded a large plutonium-processing room. The contaminated water was 2 ft. deep...
...imaginations. Yet by operating for so long behind veils of secrecy, the weaponsmakers have left a void of perception that is all too easy to fill with worries that may or may not be exaggerated. In certain ill-defined and perhaps unknown quantities, radiation in the air, soil and water can, of course, be deadly. Some of its forms may persist for many centuries. As federal officials and fiercely independent private contractors finally step out of the nuclear closet and seek vast sums to clean up the mess they have created, repair aging facilities or build new ones, they face...