I wondered whether June had sex with Nick to keep him onside. After all she's completely at his mercy now. She knows there's no way out of Gilead or any chance of rescuing Hannah without his help. He could keep her in Boston indefinitely. After all if she gets across the border he's lost her and his child.
I wondered if the toxic waste digging was echoing the uranium mines in post war east Germany. From Wikipedia:
Many Germans in what would become East Germany were forced by the Communist authorities to work in German uranium mines producing the majority of the raw material of the Soviet atomic bomb project.[16] Beginning in the summer of 1946 the Soviets began explorations in the Erzgebirge, and sealing off the old radium hot springs by September of the same year. An initial workforce of four to five thousand was established, with another 20,000 called for by the end of the year. The work was dangerous and stressful and the Soviets made no effort to improve it; as a result the mines became filled with forced labor conscripts and has been compared to a death march and the Gulags of Kolyma. Quotas were repeatedly set and raised, and conscription took place without regard to health or work experience - mines became staffed with office workers, craftsmen and students with no mining experience. By 1948 workers were pulled away from factories and criminals from jails to staff the mines, as were POWs returning to Germany from the Soviet Union. Housing lagged behind the burgeoning workers (with many regions doubling in population between 1946 and 1951), worsening already difficult conditions. The mines were considered worse than a penal colony, but were controlled directly by Moscow and local governments were unable to help. When an extra 60,000 workers were called for in the summer of 1947, a wave of potential workers flooded into West Germany to avoid the mines including many citizens who would otherwise prefer to live in the communist East. Workers who began as volunteers were turned into forced labourers. In an effort to increase the number of labourers, women were increasingly recruited to the non-segregated mines, many of whom brought or were infected with venereal diseases, and were sexually exploited by the Russian guards. Workers who attempted to escape, whether conscripts or volunteers, were hunted down and returned to the mines. Eventually Germans would become more involved in the running of the mines, forming a joint company with Russia in 1956.[17]
I think Emily killing the wife was supposed to show how hardened she had become and how the trauma she had suffered had affected her. In the flashbacks she's sticking up for herself but in quite a passionate and emotional way. Whereas in the episode she seemed quite disassociated. Which is in contrast to June who has kept her emotions buried in order to survive but now she is "free" is grieving for what has happened to her world.