Twenty Years Later

The Chernobyl disaster has always intrigued me for some reason. I guess its something about the unseen power of radiation and our inability to "fix" it or make it go away. It seems like when we build these power plants, we are really just kids playing with fire -- somebody will eventually get burned.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

I recently learned that my cousin (who I haven't seen in over 15 years) has spent the last 13 years cleaning up a site from nuclear waste used to build bombs. The site is now finally "clean" and he is out of a job, but he made it. He told me of a couple of situations where he had some pretty close calls. He told me of the time where his backhoe was slowly surrounded and immersed by a slurry of nuclear waste... he was just barely able to climb on top of the backhoe and jump out of the pit before bathing in the stuff. I don't know how much "hazard pay" he got, but I'm sure it wasn't worth it in my opinion.