For Immediate Release 

Thursday, September 29, 2011

 

Contact:                                                                                 
Courtney Hanson

(404) 524-5999                                                                          
courtney@wand.org

 

What:  Georgia WAND will host a press conference exposing the Department of Energy’s (DOE)  failure to stand behind their agreement to implement environmental testing and monitoring in Georgia, specifically in rural, poor counties near Savannah River  Site (SRS). A US nuclear weapons site, known by local residents as ‘the bomb plant’, SRS is currently tasked with Cold War legacy waste management, waste clean-up after reprocessing, plutonium disposition, and tritium production for nuclear weapons.

With its federally–funded clean–up projects coming to a close this month, the Savannah River Site (SRS) will send the last of 3000 stimulus–backed jobs packing.

In an effort to consolidate waste and operations at the Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) oldest weapons–grade plutonium plant, temporary workers contracted by the site’s managing entity, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), have spent the last two years sealing off old reactors, bringing down old buildings and shipping out contaminated waste accumulated during the Cold War.

“We’re kind of in celebration mode around here,” says Barbara Smoak, an SRNS spokesperson. “We were glad to be able to provide those jobs, even if some of them were temporary.”

Now that the clean–up is “complete” (while much radioactive debris has been removed from the property, only two of the site’s 49 tanks of high–level, radioactive liquid waste were filled with concrete) and $1.6 billion of taxpayer money has been spent, what’s next?

September 5, 2011

By Frank Munger

From the Knoxville News' Atomic City Underground blog

OAK RIDGE — Most of the Recovery Act-funded cleanup projects at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant have been completed successfully, with some coming in well ahead of schedule and under budget. Over the past couple of years, workers have taken down dirty and dilapidated buildings, removed hazardous materials and, in one memorable case, made a decades-old scrap yard disappear.

The jury is still out, however, on a project that's supposed to reduce the amount of mercury pollution — a legacy of the plant's Cold War work on thermonuclear weapons — that's entering East Fork Poplar Creek.

Aug 25, 2011

By Dr. Robert M. Bernstein

  

Water from the Rio Grande is again pumping into faucets of Albuquerque homes (soon to be followed by Santa Fe). Unfortunately, questions remain about whether pollutants from Los Alamos National Laboratory are being flushed into the river by runoff from recent storms, following the Las Conchas Fire. Because these contaminants are so toxic, it’s essential that the water be carefully tested by an independent contractor.

While there was much publicity about the danger to some 20,000 containers of transuranic waste stored under fabric tents in Area G, little was said about the 21 million cubic feet of radioactive and chemical waste on-site (21 million cubic feet is three times the amount that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is designed to hold at capacity). This waste began during World War II, and much was buried on the mesas and canyon bottoms in unlined pits, trenches and shafts. Radioactive liquid wastes were discharged directly to the canyons, especially Acid Canyon, an offshoot of Los Alamos Canyon, which flows to the Rio Grande.