The integration of science and politics to clean up 50 years in the nuclear sandbox
The Cold War was fought between world superpowers for approximately 40 years from the end of the second World War until the end of the 1980s. During that time, the US government devoted billions of dollars to the development and production of nuclear weapons. Now the Cold War is over and the US is left with numerous nuclear weapons factories, stockpiles of nuclear materials, and mountains of waste to decontaminate and decommission. In the heat of the Cold War, little or no thought was given to how the facilities building bombs would be dismantled. Far too little attention was paid to the potential human health and environmental impact of the weapons production. Now, dozens of communities across the country face the problems this negligence created. In many cases, the location, extent, and characteristics of the waste and contamination are unknown, due to negligence or due to intentional hiding of waste and associated problems. Water supplies are contaminated and threatened; air quality is degraded and threatened; workers and residents risk contamination and health impacts; entire communities risk disaster from potential nuclear catastrophe. The US government, in the form of the US Department of Energy (DOE), now accepts responsibility for creating and cleaning up the mess. But it is the local communities, the home towns of the bomb factories and laboratories, that carry a significant share of the burden of inventing the science and politics required to clean up 50 years in the nuclear sandbox. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of the local community in addressing the cleanup of the US nuclear weapons complex. Local governments do not own nor are responsible for the environmental aftermath, but remain the perpetual neighbor to the facility, the hometown of workers, and long-term caretaker of the off-site impacts of the on-site contamination and health risks.
- Research Organization:
- City of Arvada, CO (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20003328
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-990608-; TRN: IM200003%%163
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Air and Waste 92nd Annual Meeting and Exhibition, St. Louis, MO (US), 06/20/1999--06/24/1999; Other Information: 1 CD-ROM. Operating Systems: Windows 3.1, '95, '98 and NT; Macintosh; and UNIX; PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: Air and Waste 92nd annual meeting and exhibition proceedings, [9500] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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