[Mb-civic] Stupidest Idea of the Week...

[Ian]

Month?  Year?  Decade?  Century?  EVER?

This is the exact text of an article that appeared in an obscure position in The New York Times today.  My commentary is in brackets:

Plan to Explode Nuclear Facility is Dropped

BOULDER, Colo, Oct. 11 (AP) - Officials have abandoned a plan to blow up a plutonium processing building at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, saying it cannot be scoured clean enough to make detonation safe.  [Ed.: Scoured?  With what, Ajax?]

The building will have to be demolished manually, said the Kaiser-Hill Company, which is in charge of a $7 billion project to clean up the plant.  [Ed.:  $7 billion?  That's alot of Ajax...]  Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons from the 1950s to 1989, when it was shut down because of safety problems and the end of the cold war.  [Ed.: Funny how much "hot" waste was left by the "cold" war...]  The site is eventually to become a wildlife refuge. [Ed.: Wildlife?  Like what, mutated animals and insects?  Six-inch-long mosquitoes?  Glow-in-the-dark raccoons?]

Kaiser-Hill had state and federal approval to detonate the building and use the rubble to fill in its 65-foot-deep basement, but only if the abov-ground portion could be cleaned to "free-release" level: clean enough to be used in someone's backyard.  [Ed.: No problem.  How about the backyard of the owner of Kaiser-Hill?]

A Kaiser-Hill spokesman, John Corsi, said a vault where plutonium was processed and later stored could not be brought to that standard.  Instead, the vault will be demolished and its rubble will be shipped away for disposal as low-level radioactive waste.  [Ed.: Away?  Where?  Somewhere safe, I suppose.  Like maybe Akron, Ohio?...]
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