Perhaps Sarah Palin is right. There is no manmade Global Warming.

Does she have any scientific background?

the oceans will fill with fish again and life on land will also rebound.

What this proves is that if you drive man away from an environment for any period of time, for any reason, that environment will prosper.

How are they doing downwind of Chernobyl?

Do you think 50 years is enough to measure the long term effects of radiation?

Does the long term result of the environment recovering, (not actually prospering) over Hiroshima somehow validate the short term suffering?

Couldn't all this have been achieved with a less grief and suffering? Does the suffering count for anything?

I could go on, but enough for now/

Thanks!

So when H. Clinton threatened to "obliterate Iran" it would only be a temporary thing, and in a few years we could occupy the land and pump out the oil?

I feel confident that after we have a nuclear exchange with Russia over Georgia that everything will be hunky dory.

Go ahead, elect Obama. We need some more wars. They are good for the economy.

INVEST IN DEFENSE CONTRACTORS!

/fallout shelters - not so much

Looks like the people who created the last episode of Battlestar Galactica were wrong.

It's odd that this article doesn't seem to mention that there is another, as far as I can tell, more famous Christmas Island. The Christmas Island north of Australia, the one discovered by the west more than 100 years before the one mentioned in this article, went unmentioned. So if you have seen the numerous documentaries about the annual November migration of the bright red crabs on Christmas Island, and think, after reading this article, that you'd like to combine two tourist activities (nuclear and crab)... you'll be in for a surprise.

It's like the writer decided to to a travelogue about the Frankfurt in Eastern German without once noting that there is a much more prominent Frankfurt elsewhere in the country.

I guess after Sarah Palin and the Republican party nuke many millions of human beings we can ask the consummate question was it worth it all, all of the suffering and pain. And might there have been another way.

Probably the Armageddonists(the Pope, my religion) and the Rapturists(Hagee and GWB) will think it is all worth it. But then GWB thinks he is Jesus Christ and the Pope thinks he is god(small g). Somehow I just don't believe either of them. Maybe it's because they are both Republicans who adore money/profit and dominion over the lives of others.

But then authoritarians always think along those lines. Maybe, should Obama get elected, he will hopefully do something different.

All across the United States, at facilities used for weapons production and uranium processing, the story is a bit different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

Next on your trip: Hanford, WA

The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the manufacturing process left behind 53 million U.S. gallons (204,000 m³) of high-level radioactive waste that remains at the site. This represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup. While most of the current activity at the site is related to the cleanup project, Hanford also hosts a commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, and various centers for scientific research and development, such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory [managed by Battelle for the U.S. Government] and the LIGO Hanford Observatory.

Safe AND economical:

The Department of Energy is currently building a vitrification plant on the Hanford site. Vitrification is a method designed to combine these dangerous wastes with glass to render them stable. Bechtel, the San Francisco based construction and engineering firm, has been hired to construct the vitrification plant, which is currently estimated to cost approximately $12 billion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aETpg6TmswQ (60 minutes coverage)

The plant is now kicked back to 2040 or so. It has to be rebuilt because it was not earthquake-proof.

The DOE and Bechtel went ahead with the plant anyway.

The French can safely run a nuclear power system (with only a few leaks) - but they have a publicly owned and operated system, with no private involvement. Bechtel isn't managing it.

That's why the French system isn't championed by the private U.S. nuclear industry.

Sarah Palin seems to decide scientific issues politically, not using any actual science or reality-based decision mechanism.

Unfortunately, a lot of other people seem to think that way about radioactivity. Christmas Island was given a clean bill of health decades ago, but nobody shows up because they've been filled up with outrageous stories that, at least in this case, are the opposite of the truth.

The article stated that Christmas Island didn't get a lot of fallout cuz the wind blew it out to sea and it's gone. Thermonuclear test islands with different wind conditions weren't so lucky, as described in the article. Hanford and Chernobyl weren't mentioned in the article, because they are completely unrelated. Yes they are a mess.

The author brought a Geiger Counter! He actually measured the danger. I can't tell you the number of articles I've read that are written by ignorant fools who have no idea whatsoever what the danger level is. One rad, one millirad, one megarad, whatever. It's like complaining that the islamic people on your plane are going to blow it up, and demanding to land and get them off.

Great article! And very reality-based.

bobr900 writes, "I guess after Sarah Palin and the Republican party nuke many millions of human beings...."

WTF? Is there an entirely different reality out there? Where do people come up with this stuff?

Personally, I thought it was a very interesting article looking back at a site many people may have forgotten, and seen what it looks like today. Nature will find a way, without any care to US politics. Perhaps many of us should take a clue....