Cold war radioactive waste is dangerously close to an underground fire burning at a landfill, called the West Lake Landfill. Here are some articles on this evolving issue, but the key is that is the fire reaches the nuclear waste, it will emit extremely high levels for a very long time requiring mass evacuations and emergency declarations.

Washington Post, May 2016, An Underground Fire is Burning Near a Nuclear Waste Dump, and Officials say EPA has been Too Slow to React

Rapidly decomposing waste 60 feet to 200 feet down is smoldering beneath one of the landfills in what scientists call a sub-surface burning event. The underground burn is only a few thousand feet from a Superfund site filled with waste from the World War II-era Manhattan Project, the federal government’s ultimately successful effort to build an atomic bomb.

The Superfund site is managed by the Environmental Protection Agency, which neighbors and state officials say has done little to stop the burn from reaching the radioactive waste.

‘Every day, I live with anxiety. I live in fear,’ said Beckermann, a 34-year-old mother of two.

Before the agency was forced to defend itself against critics in Flint, Mich., who say it bears some of the responsibility for that city’s lead-contaminated drinking water, EPA was on the defensive in north St. Louis County. Members of Missouri’s congressional delegation have authored two bills that would strip EPA of its oversight of the 200-acre Superfund site, which is known as the West Lake Landfill. The legislation would give the Army Corps of Engineers authority over the clean-up and removal of up to 48,000 tons of nuclear waste.