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Only slightly. People working remotely through the "hot cell". Somehow the floor was broken? What's a hot cell? Why was the floor I guess flooded with this stuff? It's pretty vague on details, maybe someone who already knows a lot about what would have been happening would fill in these gaps but it seems unclear to me.

And even then the most detailed explanation in all the links given above just mention some sump that had a crack in it or something. It still doesn't actually describe what was going on one the "hot cell" that led to leaks. Someone tip over a drum of nasty stuff? They washing exposed stuff in there? Not a lot of actual details on what went on in there.

There's no "on October 2nd 1983 operator John Smith actuated the robotic arm incorrectly knocking over the canister of strontium..."




I wouldn't expect details of nuclear enrichment and refinement techniques to be published publicly, just vague bits like saying which elements they were working with.


Hanford is the result of decades of "John Smiths" doing inadequate nuclear waste disposal. The event that happened was that we were in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and nobody really knew or cared about the externalities of what they were doing.


> nobody really knew or cared about the externalities of what they were doing.

People were protesting from pretty early on. Students, hippies etc. They cared, but the establishment didn’t.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement


...nobody that worked there...


And definitely no one that was paying them or writing the rules.




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