Dive summary:

• An EPA plane has been circling around West Lake landfill in St. Louis, Mo. for the last week trying to pinpoint the areas where radioactive waste was buried decades ago.
• The amount of radiation remaining at the landfill has not yet been released; the EPA is working on a report to explain exactly where and how much radiation is left over.
• An underground fire that recently broke out at the landfill sparked questions of how close the radioactive waste is to the fire and what could happen if the two should collide.

From the article:

Officials say the distance is great enough to not have to worry about the two ever meeting, but if this new radioactive screening using this plane shows that there’s been an underground shift and that some of the radioactive material has gotten closer to that fire, it will raise the environmental risk substantially

“I’d like to see more sampling I’d like to see up to date current soil samples done,” said Chapman. “I think a lot of the residents think we’d like to know exactly what’s there

Officials say there’d be a massive effort to dig up the landfill before they’d ever let the fire reach the radioactive waste. ...