WAIT. They Found Buckets Of WHAT At The Grand Canyon?

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Watch: You Won’t Believe What They Just Found Hiding In Plain Sight At The Grand Canyon

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My man and I live only a few hours from the Grand Canyon.

We drive over pretty frequently. If we wake up INSANELY early, we can be there in time to watch the sun peak over the horizon and light the rock formations up, one by one, with a thermos of coffee in our hands. It’s magic.

So IMAGINE my surprise when I found out the canyon has quietly been covering up A URANIUM SCANDAL.

Who runs this place? Hillary Clinton?

According to Fox News:

For nearly 20 years, a trio of 5-gallon (19 liters) paint buckets sat near the taxidermy exhibit at Grand Canyon National Park ‘s museum collections building. Those buckets, it turns out, weren’t holding paint — they were actually loaded up with uranium ore, a naturally occurring rock rich in uranium that gives off potentially dangerous radiation.

Elston “Swede” Stephenson, a health and wellness manager at the park’s South Rim, recently described the uranium find and subsequent “cover-up” in a series of email blasts to Congress, his fellow National Park Service employees and the staff of The Arizona Republic newspaper.

UUUHHH.

WUT?

It gets worse

Stephenson warned that thousands of employees, tourists and school groups who visited the exhibit between 2000 and 2018 were likely “exposed” to dangerous amounts of radiation, especially groups of kids who sat for 30-minute presentations in the uranium’s vicinity. These children may have been exposed to roughly 1,400 times the safe radiation dosage allowed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Stephenson wrote. Scary stuff, if true.

WAIT. ARE YOUFREAKING KIDDING ME?! Here we are, hoping kids get in touch with nature, and instead, we’re freaking RADIATING THEM?!

Fortunately, “experts” seem to think we’ll all be fiiiiiine:

However, several experts told Live Science that Stephenson’s assessment may be unfounded.

“If the time spent near the ore was short, there is likely little cause for concern,” Bill Field, a professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa, told Live Science in an email.

Hmm. What about the people that work there?

The danger, if any, from the Grand Canyon ore buckets depends on a long list of factors, Whicker said, including an individual’s distance from the ore, the length of their exposure, the quantity of ore in the buckets, the amount of uranium in that ore, and the amount of shielding provided by the rocky parts of the ore itself and the container.

In this case, the plastic paint buckets may have provided a powerful enough shield against the ore’s radiation. Modi Wetzler, a chemistry professor at Clemson University who studies nuclear waste told The Arizona Republic that, while gamma rays can be dangerous if inhaled, they are easily absorbed and rendered harmless by just a few inches of air, or even a person’s outer layer of dead skin.

The ore’s relative harmlessness is reflected in a report from the Parks Service, which Stephenson referenced in his emails.

Ok ok ok ok. So maybe we’re fine. Everyone’s fine.

But how did they even find out about this mess?

SOME KID FOUND THEM.

After a teenager with a Geiger counter accidentally discovered the ore buckets in the museum in March 2018, the Parks Service launched a brief investigation to test radiation levels in and around the building. According to their report (which Stephenson quoted to The Arizona Republic ), direct contact with the ore resulted in radiation levels at roughly twice the safe annual dosage allowed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — however, readings taken just 5 feet (1.5 meters) away from the bucket showed zero radiation.

LOL! And they would have gotten away with it, too! If it weren’t for that meddling kid!

via GIPHY