Hanford watchdog reports contamination in cars deemed clean

摘要

A watchdog group says it has found a small amount of radioactive contamination in two cars at the Department of Energy's Hanford nuclear reservation. Hanford Challenge, based in Seattle, said it uncovered the contamination in the air filters of two workers' vehicles parked at Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant. The group had collected the filters and sent them to Marco Kaltofen, president of Boston Chemical Data Corp. and an affiliated research engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, for analysis. Kaltofen's analysis found americium, a radioactive material used during the plant's production of nuclear weapons for World War II.