A few years back, I noted a rich family in Arizona that was pushing the Park Service into buying up large chunks of their ranch abutting Petrified Forest National Park, ostensibly to preserve the fossils on the property. The real reason came out shortly: "We're losing money on this land, we made a mess of it, and now we want the Feds to come in, pay us three times what it's worth, and take it off our hands. Toodles!" The idea of turning Hanford into a national park is just par for the course.

Thanks, Jack. People need to be reminded that the Columbia River, for all the beauty of the Gorge, is still the most radioactive river in North America, downstream of Hanford.

I don't think it is going to get any less radioactive in the near future.

Bectel is a current "clean up" contractor. General Electric ran the place for decades.

A park! Just like Chernobyl! Family fun for all.

That report is damning. It appears to follow by a day this smiley-face ready-to-go-again report:

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/construction-ready-to-go-again-at-hanford/f1c53339297846158ab81836f7e105ed

The only good use I could see for that site is to make into a landfill for every TV set in the country.

There is already a commercially run "low-level" radioactive waste dump at Hanford, where toxic garbage comes from many different sources. It includes medical waste, but also lots and lots of "crapped up" (that's what the nucle-heads call contaminated) garbage from nuclear power plants all over the country. All the Navy's nuclear submarine reactor cores are also dumped at Hanford.

The Bechtel boys and the Energy Department devils want to keep the loud conversation going about the mythical "cleanup," when in fact more radioactive waste is quietly being shipped to Hanford every day.

Stop the complaining! The whole point of government is to transfer your money to the "wealth creators" in society. So, the system is working as it should... ;)

6B
6C
Unfortunately doesn't work in bureaus and appointments,
all the more to be seriously vetting those we elect who make appointments.
Waaaaaay too many dangerous decisions are made on our behalf leaving citizens as symbolically being watchdogs only but without power to stop when elected officials are tied in too closely with corporations and those who reap major financial benefits at the expense of human health. These decisions might have been easier to have excuses for or to cover up years ago, but the mound of problems has magnified, now what?
Oh we are sorry we botched up??
But we will continue to do so anyway??

Bechtel-Screwing the taxpayer and the pooch since 1945.™

I've been to the B Reactor. History is not always pretty, and I do believe it (just the B Reactor) should be turned into a National Monument.

We must learn from the past, so that we do not doom our future by repeating our mistakes.

I know one of these Bechtel guys. He's made a tidy career out of Hanford cleanup, to the point where he blew off the other important aspects of his life to focus on this.

I won't judge anybody else there, but this guy is IMHO immoral and short-sighted. And very successful. Endless, pointless Hanford cleanup is his only job now.

Would any of it have been possible without Government largesse? Is there any end to the contract gravy-train? It wouldn't seem so. He's counting on it for another 20 years.