In America’s rush to build the #nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed.

#Uranium mills that helped fuel the weapons also dumped #radioactive and toxic waste into rivers. Thousands of sheep turned blue & died after foraging on tainted land. #Cancer wards across the West swelled with sick uranium workers.

The government bankrolled the industry but didn’t have a plan for the toxic byproducts of this nuclear assembly line.

https://www.propublica.org/article/uranium-mills-pollution-cleanup-us?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater

For the first time, ProPublica has cataloged cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed to fuel the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Even after regulators say cleanup is complete, polluted water and sickness are often left behind.

ProPublica
@ProPublica Only after a TIME magazine cover on the mid-1980s about children with cancer from the Fernald plant on Ohio (“They Lied to Us”)—and Senator John Glenn’s furious demands for investigation—did the US DOE agree that the US EPA had any right of oversight of their facilities—which gave us the Superfund Sites like Hanford and Savannah River.
I edited the EPA “Sampling and Analysis Plan” for Savannah River in my previous life as a science editor.