Homer Goes To Hanford
America’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Cleanup Runs Like a Simpsons Episode
“Trying is the first step toward failure.” – Homer Simpson
As America launches an expensive new war, workers are still cleaning up radioactive waste generated from the bomb it dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.
The job at the Hanford, Wash., nuclear production complex may end up costing more than $640 billion and won’t be done until at least 2060. It could cost even more and take longer if Homer Simpson has his way.
The cartoon nuclear safety inspector is famous for chomping donuts and napping at the control panel. Hanford workers do pretty much the same thing.
On Monday, the Justice Department announced a $5 million settlement with Hanford Mission Integration Solutions for allegedly allowing workers to take naps and watch TV on the job. Then the contractor stuck the Department of Energy, and U.S. taxpayers with the tab for their hours.
Hanford is a 580-square-mile site that is perhaps the most dangerous environmental legacy of World War II and the Cold War.
It’s where more than 10,000 workers are trying to keep 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge from leaching into the Columbia River and forever poisoning one of our nation’s great waterways. The Department of Energy is spending about $3 billion a year for their services and some of them were quite literally sleeping on the job.
The reason they got caught was because an employee named Bradley Keever filed two whistleblower lawsuits. He’ll be getting a $793,500 settlement from the government, plus his employer will pay him $1.5 million for expenses and attorney fees.
Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, which has a contract for up to 10 years that is worth at up to $6 billion, offered no comment.
Behind closed doors, though, you can imagine executives muttering the one truly wise word ever spoken by Homer Simpson:
“D’oh!”
