It's a place of superlatives. Reporters have called it the most polluted place in the Western Hemisphere. It's also the location of one of the largest construction projects in the world. · At the Hanford Site in south-central Washington state, 177 giant tanks sit below the sandy soil, brimming with the radioactive remnants of 44 years of nuclear-materials production. From World War II through the Cold War, Hanford churned out plutonium for more than 60,000 nuclear weapons, including the atomic bomb that razed Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945. The sprawling enterprise eventually contaminated the soil and groundwater and left behind 212 million liters of toxic waste-enough to fill 85 Olympic-size swimming pools. Decades after the site stopped producing plutonium, the U.S. government is still grappling with how to clean it all up. · Today the 1,500-square-kilometer site, roughly half the size of Rhode Island, is a quiet expanse of sagebrush and wispy grasses outside Richland, Wash. The underground steel-and-reinforced-concrete tanks are grouped in "farms" beneath a central plateau, while shuttered nuclear reactors stand like sentinels on the periphery. Scientists have identified some 1,800 contaminants inside the tanks, including plutonium, uranium, cesium, aluminum, iodine, and mercury. Watery liquids rest atop goop as thick as peanut butter and salt cakes resembling wet beach sand.

中文翻译：

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177个巨大的放射性污泥池该怎么办


这是一个最高级的地方。记者称其为西半球污染最严重的地方。它也是世界上最大的建筑项目之一的所在地。 · 在华盛顿州中南部的汉福德基地，177 个巨型储罐位于沙土之下，里面充满了 44 年核材料生产的放射性残留物。从第二次世界大战到冷战，汉福德生产了超过 60,000 件核武器所需的钚，其中包括 1945 年 8 月将日本长崎夷为平地的原子弹。这个庞大的企业最终污染了土壤和地下水，并留下了 2.12 亿升钚。有毒废物——足以填满 85 个奥林匹克规模的游泳池。该工厂停止生产钚几十年后，美国政府仍在努力解决如何将其全部清理干净的问题。 · 如今，这片占地 1,500 平方公里的场地，大约是罗德岛州面积的一半，是华盛顿州里奇兰郊外一片安静的、长满山艾树和稀疏草丛的场地。中部高原，而关闭的核反应堆则像哨兵一样矗立在外围。科学家们已经在储罐内发现了大约 1,800 种污染物，包括钚、铀、铯、铝、碘和汞。水状液体停留在像花生酱一样厚的粘稠物和类似于潮湿的海滩沙子的盐饼上。