A two-and-a-half thousand square mile site

摘要

The thought of regulating radioactive contamination over an area of 2,500 square miles is the sort of nightmare which keeps regulators awake at night. But just such a situation exists in America, where decades of uranium mining and milling have left an almost unimaginable legacy of contamination. And if dealing with huge quantities of radioactively contaminated soil and groundwater over vast areas and numbers of sites weren't enough, there's always the thought that a tiny quantity of such material can pose very significant health risks on a residential site. So spare a thought for those in New Mexico where, amongst a vast range of contamination challenges, just eight heavily impacted residential properties have needed to have thousands of tonnes of soil removed.