The Hanford nuclear plant comes from an era when not really enough was understood about nuclear power. And it more than amply demonstrates the problems that can develop when our ability overreaches our knowledge.

Not just Americans, but everybody.

I know quite a bit about the problems extant at the Hanford reservation because I worked as a radio news reporter for a year in Pasco, Washington, just a short distance down the Columbia River from Hanford.

It's one helluva mess and a major clean-up problem. Among mitigating circumstances, Hanford is a patch of desert. But it is nervously close to the river. Let's not risk another ecological disaster in such a sensitive area as the Oglala aquifer. A lot of people, not just Americans, might go hungry if one of the world's major agricultural areas goes oil-sodden.

Don Firth