Plutonium Finishing Plant personnel have finished stabilizing one of the riskiest forms of plutonium-bearing materials at Hanford. Polycubes are small cubes of polystyrene impregnated with pure plutonium oxide. Hundreds of polycube items remained at PFP after being fabricated for use in criticality experiments at Hanford during the 1960s and early 1970s. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory assisted in the cleanup of these difficult materials. - Image by PNNL - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory via FlickrThis week the Japanese decided to change the standard of what the plant workers are exposed to when they discovered it was 250 times the acknowledged international standard. Leave it to the dogma crowd to downplay the severity of this situation by declaring 'new standards' of radiation levels so that the plant workers are only exposed to 2.5 times their new standard."
