Nuclear / Radioactive
Inside this geometric mound, with a skin of coarsely crushed rock, is a demolished uranium mill and its radioactive tailings. The mill was buried in 1992 by the Department of Energy, one of 24 uranium mill tailings sites in the US that are being remediated as part of the Uranium Mill Tailings...
Arkansas's only nuclear power plant is located near Russelville. It has two reactor units, opened in 1974 and 1978, generating a total of 1,800 megawatts. Unit Two uses the tall cylindrical cooling structure, and Unit 1 discharges its cooling water into the adjacent Lake Dardanelle. The plant's...
Reactive Metals Incorporated (RMI) is a private company that processed uranium for reactors at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site and the N-Reactor at Hanford, WA. Primarily formed fuel rods out of uranium billet supplied by the Fernald Feed Plant, using DOE-owned extrusion presses....
Barnwell is one of only a few commercial radioactive waste disposal facilities in the country, and is considered one of the most active of these sites. It is next to the DOE's Savannah River Site, one of the largest nuclear technology locations in the nation. The 300 acre Barnwell facility accepts...
Texas' first nuclear power complex is the South Texas project in Bay City, one of two nuclear plants in the state. The South Texas Project has 2 reactors. Unit1 has the highest output capability of any nuclear reactor in the country: 1,251 megawatts. The South Texas unit 2, has the second...
A chemical and radioactive waste dump, and one of the few commercial facilities that can accept certain low-level radioactive and mixed hazardous/PCB wastes. It opened in 1970, as a radioactive waste site, and has over 1 million cubic yard capacity. Famous briefly for lending radioactive machinery...
Navy nuclear propulsion lab, owned by the Department of Energy, and operated by Westinghouse. Engaged in research and development into nuclear propulsion plants, and has a lab and field test facility at the Naval Reactors Facility, within the Idaho National Engineering Lab, in Idaho. The...
A "nuclear waste" site, as it was called by its owner, Ed Grothus, a former worker at Los Alamos Lab, who quit bomb work there for ethical reasons in the 1960s, and became a celebrated and entertaining antinuclear activist. The Black Hole is a dense collection of cast off instruments and appliances...
The Bradbury Science Museum, located in the town of Los Alamos, is the information center and science museum operated by Los Alamos National Lab, and contains many interesting exhibits and displays, including much related to the nuclear testing program.
This Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear plant has had a number of incidents. In 1975, a worker looking for leaks with a lighted candle started a fire that burned out all the electrical controls for the reactor, causing $100 million in damages, and a near disaster when cooling water temperature for...
This is one of a few dozen similar radioactive waste disposal cells in the USA created to entomb the remains of former uranium mining operations. It covers 63 acres, and contains over a million dry tons of waste material, composed of tailings, soil, and buildings from the two uranium mills,...
The largest underground nuclear test conducted by the United States, Project Cannikin was one of three underground nuclear tests performed at different places on this 43-mile long island in the Aleutian Chain. This $200 million 1971 test was performed to test an Anti-Ballistic Missile warhead, for...
Tailings from a uranium mine, currently undergoing clean-up as part of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act Project. The site covers approximately 30 acres.
The Central Nevada Test Site Base Camp is a cluster of small technical buildings, sheds, residences, and an airstrip, with a recently upgraded and lighted runway. It is now used primarily by the Air Force in association with activities at the Nellis Range Complex, such as the threat emitter site...
In 1954, a dust-filled movie called "The Conqueror", starring John Wayne as Genghis Kahn, was shot in this valley, on ground that had been recently subjected to fallout from a series of nuclear tests at the nearby Nevada Test Site (especially dirty at this time was the 1953 above-ground test code-...
Sometimes called the Atlas Site, this is the base of operations for the Department of Energy in Nevada and the Pacific Ocean, and the main administrative, research, and engineering complex for the primary contractor at the Nevada Test Site, Bechtel, Nevada (until 1996 it was EG...
The Durango Uranium Mill was one of two uranium recovery plants in Colorado set up secretly in 1943 to produce uranium for the Manhattan Project. Uranium from this site, and the other in Uravan, was shipped to the new secret refinery in Grand Junction, now the DOE's Grand Junction Lab. This uranium...
One of six radon health mines in this part of Montana, which apparently are the only active radon health mines in the United States. The Earth Angel, a former gold mine, has the strongest concentration of radon gas, limiting users to 20 visits at a stretch (instead of the usual 30). Halfway down...
Sirens such as this one are installed in three Massachusetts communities near the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in southern Vermont. In the event of an accident at the plant, the siren would emit a steady three to five minute tone, after which residents should tune to an Emergency Alert radio...
Radioactive tailings from a uranium mine (located between a dairy farm and a school), currently undergoing clean-up as part of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act Project. The site consists of two parcels: Parcel A covers 473 acres, and Parcel B, which is 0.9 miles east of Parcel A, covers...
For thirty years, a 365 square mile area around the Farallon Islands served as the nation's primary nuclear waste dumping ground. From 1945 to 1970, when nuclear dumping at sea was prohibited, an estimated 47,500 barrels of radioactive debris from nuclear labs such as Lawrence Livermore were dumped...
This reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was built in 1982 for breeder reactor research and enriched uranium production. Though it was closed in 1992, it has been placed on "Hot Standby" status, with the possibility of producing tritium and medical isotopes for cancer treatment. It is in the...
Faultless was a large (approx. one megaton) underground nuclear experiment conducted in 1968 to test the possibility of developing the area as a second nuclear testing location. The Central Nevada Test Site would have hosted several high-yield nuclear tests associated with antiballistic missile...
Part of the Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex, the original function of this plant was to produce uranium metals for reactors at Hanford, Washington, as well as for other DOE weapons facilities. Fernald was also the DOE's primary thorium storage site. Production operations were...
The lab where the first nuclear chain reaction took place, in 1942, was in a converted handball court at the University of Chicago, under the grandstands at the Stagg Field Stadium. Stagg Field was demolished in the late 1960's, but a monument was constructed at the site, a 12 foot tall bronze...
The Dawn Mining Company operated the last active uranium mill in the state, near the town of Ford, in eastern Washington, producing around 50,000 pounds per year of material that is further refined into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. The source is the Midnite Uranium Mine, 15 miles away...
The Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site is the location of a 1967 underground nuclear explosion, conducted to test the viability of using a nuclear device to aid in natural gas extraction. It was part of the Plowshare Program, the program to develop peaceful uses of nuclear weapons, and was the first use of...
The Project Gnome Site is the location of a 1961 underground nuclear test conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission, near Loving, New Mexico. This was the first test in the Plowshare Program, a program to develop peaceful uses for nuclear weapons. The Lawrence Radiation Lab (which later became...
A nuclear power plant with a single 520-foot-tall cooling tower. Located on a 2,300-acre site on the east bank of the Mississippi River, Grand Gulf opened in 1982, and reached full capacity in 1985. The plant has an output capacity of 1,300 megawatts. A planned second reactor was never built....
This was the site of a former uranium mill, removed and recently cleaned up as part of the federal Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act Project. Also known as the Climax Mill site, it covers approximately 114 acres. The mill operated for 19 years, and shut down in 1970. Tailings left at the site...