America's Most TOXIC Site Could Be Worse Than CHERNOBYL - PBS Terra

[Rhiannon12866]

The clean energy transition and the A.I. revolution both need LOTS of land to succeed. Could this radioactive site half the size of Rhode Island be just what they need? Or is it a disaster waiting to happen? Watch this episode to find out. - 07/02/2026.

[czarjak]

1. DAMNED-IF-WE-DO...

Sleep tight, EVERYBODY!

[hunter]

2. If I dial 811 will they tell me not to dig there?

Toxic waste sites are pretty common in the U.S.A.. Hanford might not be the worst.



If someone is killed or sickened by toxic waste it really doesn't matter if it's radioactive or not. Dead is dead, sick is sick.

People all over the United States are still drinking and bathing in water that is contaminated by toxic industrial and agricultural wastes.

When I was growing up the groundwater in a nearby town was contaminated with toxic Hexavalent chromium originating from various "clean" industries. I think in those days "clean" meant they didn't burn coal, which impressed recent immigrant's from America's industrial heartland.

This was all before Erin Brockovich. Not much was said about it, probably for fear of depressing real estate prices, but it did add impetus to import water from the Colorado River and California State Water Project.

[Rhiannon12866]

3. Yikes! It looks like there's a cluster in the Northeast and I'm in New York just above a couple of them

I know there were problems with Lake George which is just north of me, but fortunately they were all temporary. Thanks for posting the map!

[hunter]

5. The image is from Wikipedia. I neglected to include an attribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites

It seems to me that focusing on toxic waste sites from the past like Hanford that are today relatively stable distracts us from ongoing modern day horrors like this:

"This is a hellhole": Aramco makes its presence hurt in the shadow of the World Cup

The street is wide, its grass verges thick and scruffy after a week of rainstorms. Jamal Johnson will walk home straight down the middle carrying his plastic shopping bag, a jot of motion through the stillness. He lives in one of the modest wood-panelled houses spaced out on each side, most lovingly kept and passed through at least two generations. There is nobody else in sight, but a freight train breaks the silence, grinding left to right along the line flanking the north-facing gardens. The west side of Port Arthur, Texas, could be any lower-income neighbourhood in the southern states if it were not for the looming menace on the other side of the track.

This is a sad, unsettling place. “I’ve got a load of friends and family who’ve had weird diseases,” says Johnson, his face contorting at the thought. He lists a grandfather and aunt who died of cancer, the latter at a young age after relocating here to care for other relatives. An uncle died with complications from ALS (motor neurone disease). “You know what I’m saying? Man, they’ve let off all these poisonous gases; it’s like that all the time. It’s fucked up.”

-- more --

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/04/aramco-world-cup-fifa-port-arthur-texas-houston

[Wonder Why]

4. It's hard to tell, are the White House and Mar-a-Lago on the map?

[NNadir]

6. The Savannah River, Hanford, Rocky Flats, etc. garner a lot of attention.

The assumption underlying all of this attention is that the death toll associated with exposure to radiation is enormous, that radiation deaths are very common.

They aren't.

Savannah River, Hanford, Rocky Flats, etc. have been there for decades and are now, because of decay, less radioactive then they were when they operated.

If we paid as much attention to the deaths from extreme heat exposure as we do to trivial radiation exposure, we would have brains.

But we don't have brains, we don't even fear fear itself. We revel in fear.

Some years back, a tiresome antinuke fool carried on around here about the collapse of a tunnel that collapsed at Hanford in which some old rail cars on which abandoned plutonium isolation reactors had been stored.

It inspired me to look into the matter in way too much detail given that there is no evidence that there are many antinukes who demonstrate familiarity with the contents of science books, whereupon, in writing it, I explored the interesting geochemistry of radionuclides, for my own benefit anyway, assuredly not for the benefit of the antinuke in question.

My ruminations on the topic are here: 828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels

Over the years, I've come across many papers on the Savannah River site. It's an interesting case on the geochemistry of radionuclides but it is not decidedly a disaster on the scale of Chornobyl - the big boogeyman of antinukist cults - and Chornobyl is a trivial matter when compared to the collapse of the planetary atmosphere. What Chornobyl is really is an interesting unintentional laboratory on radiobiology, but not a tragedy on the scale of the bombing of Kiev funded by German antinukes who bought fossil fuels from Putin because they were so fucking scared of radiation from Chornobyl.

Yesterday in New Jersey, where I live, people were killed by extreme heat. To my mind, they were killed by irrational fear of radioactive materials, which for 80 years have been whipped up by illiterate journalists.

I didn't watch the video in the OP, and I won't. I've been exposed to this radiation paranoid ignorance my whole damned life. The elevation of fear of radiation is more deadly than radiation itself and it's driven by journalists, the same "journalists" who put an orange pedophile in the White House.

These kinds of "exposes" by journalists inspire my more serious than not "joke" that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.