Idaho Falls is Beautiful!

[banjomike]

I suspect Idaho Falls becomes exposed to all kinds of diseases that aren't common. Since the INL is one of the nation's leading labs, I'm sure we get folks from all over who come for conferences and related stuff, and since our airport is regional, we get a lot of vacationers and skiers from all over the world, too. And we get bus loads of folks coming through town all summer long, going on Yellowstone Park tours.

Even so, our hospitals and clinics don't see some diseases very much. A friend caught malaria once during his travels around the world, and it flared up while he was staying with me. I took him to the emergency room, and the docs didn't know what he had until he gave them his medical history.
When they learned it was malaria, they called the ISU Nursing school so all the student nurses could come up and observe what malaria looks like!

We're lucky, though, I think. Our seasonal extremes and dry air probably kill a lot of tropical diseases that might find a toehold somewhere else. Our breeze probably helps, too.

[CalifornianWantingOut]

My wife had done a little research and read a few things about a problem with the wind blowing radioactive contamination though IF, from radioactive waste that was buried improperly years ago, and that is was linked to many cases of people getting cancer. I know there might be some over-reacting, in those articles, but is this true, or is it blown out of proportion. There was something about IF receiving retribution for this. Is this something that is currently being address, and cleaned up properly? Any info on this would be super helpful!

[cleosmom]

Originally Posted by CalifornianWantingOut

My wife had done a little research and read a few things about a problem with the wind blowing radioactive contamination though IF, from radioactive waste that was buried improperly years ago, and that is was linked to many cases of people getting cancer. I know there might be some over-reacting, in those articles, but is this true, or is it blown out of proportion. There was something about IF receiving retribution for this. Is this something that is currently being address, and cleaned up properly? Any info on this would be super helpful!

With winds aloft blowing the air from all over the globe, no telling. In fact, sitting there in So CAL, you could be getting drifts of nuclear waste from Japan's nuclear site. Not certain if you're old enough to remember when Mount St Helen's in OR blew in the 80's, but the ash from that volcano covered several states and even went into Canada.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by CalifornianWantingOut

My wife had done a little research and read a few things about a problem with the wind blowing radioactive contamination though IF, from radioactive waste that was buried improperly years ago, and that is was linked to many cases of people getting cancer. I know there might be some over-reacting, in those articles, but is this true, or is it blown out of proportion. There was something about IF receiving retribution for this. Is this something that is currently being address, and cleaned up properly? Any info on this would be super helpful!

There's no airborne contamination here that I've ever heard about. I suspect someone confused it with the notorious radiation plume that drifted northwest from the Las Vegas test site in the 1955. THe tippy-tip of that one reached Boise, but had largely dissipated by then.

If that plume had contaminated every spot it was rumored to, over the years, half of the people in the intermountain west would have glowed in the dark. Some of the fallout did settle on the film set of "The Conqueror", a lousy John Wayne movie being filmed in the utah canyonlands during the tests, and supposedly. some of the cast & crew came down with cancer. I think that's how that rumor came to be so large and immortal.

None of the waste at the INL was never left out in the open. All was contained and buried, and while that contamination caused some problems, none came from windborne contamination. There is an ongoing decontamination going on that uses glassification of the wastes that, after over 20 years, is now nearing completion. Since INL has always been a testing lab, most of the decontamination procedures used in commercial power reactors during re-fueling were created and first initiated here. It's always been one of the missions of the INL from the very first.

Much of the waste comes from articles such as protective clothing and gear, tools, mops and buckets, and other material that was used in the hot spaces. Most is not contaminated, but since it was possibly exposed to some contamination, the standard practice is to treat it as if it is. Hot suits, tools papers, and everything else are disposed of after a single use, for example, as a safeguard measure, and there are many long-standing procedures that are followed during the disposal process.
There's an entire staff of workers whose job is to supervise and monitor all this. They are called health physicists. They also create all the records during disposal and de-contamination as the process goes, step by step.

MSR would know cancer rates here, most likely, but as far as I know they're no greater than anywhere else.

Nuclear paranoia runs high in this country, for sure; the folks in I.F. don't worry about it, never have, but if you fear the atom, there's nothing any of us can say that will assuage those fears. Much of the rumors have come from Jackson Hole, where there's a belief that the over-inflated real estate could lose money due to the proximity to the INL site. Jackson has never measure any radiation except for the levels that naturally occur from the elevation (the sun) and the soil. The west has natural levels everywhere you go. It's all NIMBY coming out of Jackson Hole.

[CalifornianWantingOut]

Thank you guys and gals, you have been very helpful!

[TohobitPeak]

Idaho Falls is a beautiful town. The downtown area is really scenic with a lot of great historic architecture.