GAO Report - Radioactive Waste And Toxic Chemicals Buried Abroad May Be Released By Warming

[hatrack]

EDIT

A federal report by the Government Accountability Office published last month examines what’s left of that nuclear contamination, not only in the Pacific but also in Greenland and Spain. The authors conclude that climate change could disturb nuclear waste left in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. “Rising sea levels could spread contamination in RMI, and conflicting risk assessments cause residents to distrust radiological information from the U.S. Department of Energy,” the report says.

Ed. - RMI - Rongelap Marshall Islands

In Greenland, chemical pollution and radioactive liquid are frozen in ice sheets, left over from a nuclear power plant on a U.S. military research base where scientists studied the potential to install nuclear missiles. The report didn’t specify how or where nuclear contamination could migrate in the Pacific or Greenland, or what if any health risks that might pose to people living nearby. However, the authors did note that in Greenland, frozen waste could be exposed by 2100.

“The possibility to influence the environment is there, which could further affect the food chain and further affect the people living in the area as well,” said Hjalmar Dahl, president of Inuit Circumpolar Council Greenland. The country is about 90 percent Inuit. “I think it is important that the Greenland and U.S. governments have to communicate on this worrying issue and prepare what to do about it.”

The authors of the GAO study wrote that Greenland and Denmark haven’t proposed any cleanup plans, but also cited studies that say much of the nuclear waste has already decayed and will be diluted by melting ice. However, those studies do note that chemical waste such as polychlorinated biphenyls, man-made chemicals better known as PCBs that are carcinogenic, “may be the most consequential waste at Camp Century.”

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https://grist.org/indigenous/decades-after-the-us-buried-nuclear-waste-abroad-climate-change-could-unearth-it/

[hunter]

1. The amounts of radioactive toxins are almost negligible in comparison to the nonradioactive toxins.

Last edited Sun Mar 3, 2024, 11:17 AM - Edit history (1)

We've been very well programmed to ignore the non-radioactive toxins and greenhouse gasses of our fossil fueled industrial economy.

We drive around without concern in our cars, each one spewing carcinogens like a miniature Chernobyl, and we express outrage if anyone dares suggest that cooking with gas may be hazardous to our health.

We pay little concern to where our household garbage goes, or to the landfills and industrial sites that will be taken by the oceans as sea levels rise.

Of all the toxins dispersed by the same Tsunami that damaged the nuclear power plant at Fukushima it's the non-radioactive ones that did the most environmental damage, but all those are largely ignored because they are so familiar.

[hatrack]

2. Yeah, the article was noting that the Greenland nuclear waste has (for the most part) decayed . . .

Not so sure if that would apply to PCBs and other crap we left behind.