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Nuclear Weapons Site Cleanup Completed
The U.S. Energy Department announced yesterday that the cleanup of a former plutonium pit production facility in Colorado is complete (see GSN, Nov. 15). The Rocky Flats site, where nearly all plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons were manufactured from 1951 to 1991, is the first former nuclear weapons site to be cleaned, the Associated Press reported. While contractor Kaiser-Hill has completed its work, said Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell, state and federal health officials must examine the site to make sure it has been cleaned properly. “It's huge. … When you think of all the material inside, and the difficulty of the cleanup, and quite frankly the difficulty of finding other places to take the material, from New Mexico, to Idaho, to South California. This is an achievement of a massive scale,” Sell said. Original reports estimated that cleanup of the site would cost $36 billion and take seven decades. “We cleaned it up in 10 years for $7 billion,” said Kaiser-Hill spokesman John Corsi. The company has won other contracts because of its work, he added. Most of the site’s 6,200 acres will be converted into a wildlife refuge, but several areas would remain closed, according to AP (Robert Weller, Associated Press/Baltimore Sun, Dec. 8).
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