Example 1: Nuclear Waste

• Decontamination and remediation of large areas of former weapon production facilities (e.g. Rocky flats, Hanford tanks). This has been estimated as requiring 30-50 years to accomplish and to cost something on the order of several hundred billion dollars.(114 facilities, 8500 km2, 344 million liter of high radioactive waste)

Hanford was the site of the nation’s

first industrial-scale plutonium facilityand has produced over half of the Puin the US nuclear weapon stockpile.

177 underground tanks contain a soupof inorganic and organic chemicalsand radionuclides that exist in severalphysical forms: liquid, sludge, slurries,and saltcake.

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