Barrels of radioactive waste at Hanford, Washington.
Submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site are 1,936 stainless-steel nuclear-waste capsules containing cesium and strontium. Combined, they contain over 120 million curies of radioactivity. It is estimated to be the most curies under one roof in the United States. The blue glow is created by the Cherenkov Effect which describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, giving off energy, moves faster than light through a transparent medium. The temperatures of the capsules are as high as 330 degrees Fahrenheit. The pool of water serves as a shield against radiation; a human standing one foot from an unshielded capsule would receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 10 seconds.
The photo is from what sounds like a very cool book, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, by Taryn Simon, “a study of spaces typically off-limits to the public.”
Is it just me, or does it vaguely look like the continental United States?
Hmmm ..
Actually, to me looks like a blue orange with brown/green spots here and there shaped similar to earth continents and oceans …
Damm .. where are we, humans, going, Dave ?
That’s an interesting study in itself; what we see looking at a semi-random distribution of lights. If I were the crane operator, I probably coulden’t resist arranging the barrells in some recognizable/ironic pattern to the great annoyance of my supervisors.
Dunno. But, as always, we’re making a mess as we go.
(Though, for the record, while nuclear power is freaking scary, I don’t rule out its use as an energy source, and am more than a bit annoyed by folks who consider Nukes=BAD as religiously axiomatic. It’s all a matter of balances.)
Scary indeed. I live directly downwind of Hanford. The supposed clean-up has been a comedy of errors.
Yikes. Not my preferred real estate.
My company almost ended up with some work there; I was involved with the proposal, and would have probably visited the site at some point if the bid had been successful. It wasn’t — which is probably a good thing (having already spent more time at Rocky Flats and Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Oak Ridge than is likely good for me).
It makes me think of a pattern from John Conway’s Life game.
Of course, since the capsules are highly radioactive, perhaps it’s the Anti-Life version.
But I can see what you mean Dave, it does kind of remind me of the Continental US for some strange reason.
Well, the US is essentially a rectangle (as is this). There’s a slope like the Mexican border down to Texas (as here). The Florida and Main points are kind of malformed, but there’s something there. And the Pacific coast sort of bulges in the right places.