Since
Waste News expends a good deal of ink covering issues related to nuclear
waste, it seems appropriate to note that yesterday marked the 20th
anniversary of the nuclear-reactor explosion near Chernobyl, Ukraine,
that spewed a radioactive dust cloud over much of Eastern Europe.
(Ukraine, of course, was a constituent republic of the U.S.S.R. in those
days.)
Here are stories from
Reuters,
BBC News and London's
The Times describing commemorative events held yesterday
near the accident site.
And for those who want to delve deeply into the events of the days
leading up to and following the Chernobyl disaster, here is an
encyclopedic -- no, make that Wikipedic -- historic
overview. It's harrowing, sobering stuff.
While we're on the topic, loosely, of Cold War-era hazardous waste,
here's another interesting story from that bailiwick, this one
originating closer to home.
The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
reports that the U.S. Army says it could save $347
million on the destruction and disposal of 250,000 gallons of VX nerve
agent if it were permitted to finish the project at a plant in New
Jersey rather than at the chemical depot in Indiana where the
semiprocessed material is currently stored.
Activists in the states that lie along the route the material would
have to be transported -- Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey -- are
understandably up in arms about the Army's plan to move the arms.
Today's next item pertains, again somewhat appropriately, to
Terrorism War-era hazardous waste -- cell phones, to be precise. The
San Jose Mercury News
reports that the Washington, D.C.-based environmental
group Earthworks has issued a study claiming that efforts to recycle
cell phones in the U.S. haven't amounted to a hill of beans so far.
Specifically, the report about the report reports that fewer than 2%
of the 130 million cell phones discarded in the U.S. each year are being
recycled, and that many of the remainder go to landfills, where they
have the potential to leach lovely enhancements like lead, arsenic and
mercury into the soil.
Let's end the day with an item from one of Inbox's favorite
made-up-news sites, the Borowitz Report, which
reported earlier this month that a new report reports
that cell phones pose health risks when thrown at one's head by
Naomi Campbell.
Since
Waste News expends a good deal of ink covering issues related to nuclear
waste, it seems appropriate to note that yesterday marked the 20th
anniversary of the nuclear-reactor explosion near Chernobyl, Ukraine,
that spewed a radioactive dust cloud over much of Eastern Europe.
(Ukraine, of course, was a constituent republic of the U.S.S.R. in those
days.)
