Spokane: A portion of an underground tunnel containing rail cars filled with radioactive waste collapsed at a sprawling storage facility in a remote area of Washington state, forcing an evacuation of some workers at the site that made plutonium for nuclear weapons for decades after World War II.
No workers were inside the tunnel when it collapsed on Tuesday, causing soil on the surface above to sink two to four feet (half to 1.2 meters) over a 400 square foot (37.1 square meters) area, officials said.
The tunnels are hundreds of feet long, with about eight feet (2.4 meters) of soil covering them, the US Department of Energy said.
It was discovered as part of a routine inspection and occurred during a massive cleanup that has been under way since the 1980s and costs more than USD 2 billion a year. The work is expected to take until 2060 and cost more than $100 billion.
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