Richland, Washington. If clean-up of Hanford and the other nuclear weapons production sites were to proceed using existing technologies, most experts believe that the task could continue indefinitely without success ever being achieved. That is because some problems on the sites -- in particular the ground contamination caused by past leakages of toxins and radionuclides -- simply cannot be fixed using available technology. Others, such as the need to dispose of large volumes of highly radioactive mixed wastes, can be handled with existing technology, but only at extraordinarily high cost.
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