Nuclear / Radioactive
One of the largest nuclear power plants in the country, and one of a few operated by Duke Energy. Has a vistor's center and a science exhibit oriented towards school groups, called Duke Energy's World of Energy.
Former Union Carbide uranium mill site, now remediated. There are two former mill sites around Rifle, this, the Old Rifle site, which covers approximately 22 acres on the southeast side of town, and New Rifle site, which covers approximately 33 acres west of town, between the river and the...
Currently the only fully operational uranium enrichment plant in the United States, Paducah is a massive industrial site that produces uranium 235 for use in nuclear power plants and nuclear propulsion systems, such as submarines (U235 is also a component in nuclear weaponry). The plant is owned by...
A nuclear power plant on Lake Michigan, with a single reactor. This facility includes more than twenty 16-foot-tall casks used for storage of radioactive spent fuel rods, each containing 30 tons. One of a growing number of nuclear power plants opting to store their waste in above-ground containers...
Largest nuclear power complex in the country and the 12th largest in the world. The facility cost nearly $6 billion, and took twelve years to build, with the last reactor completed in 1988. With a net capacity of 3,663 megawatts, the three reactor units generate power for nearly 4 million people,...
Originally the final assembly facility for the nation's nuclear weapons, Pantex is currently the nation's only nuclear weapons disassembly and plutonium storage site. An old WWII Army munitions plant, the facility was converted to nuclear device assembly in 1951, when it was taken over by the...
Now the only nuclear power plant operating in Massachusetts, Pilgrim Station is located a few miles down the coast from Plymouth Rock. Like many similar plants, it was constructed by Bechtel, and is powered by a General Electric reactor and generator. Built at a cost of $231 million in 1972 by...
Being transitioned to civilian use as an industrial site, since its official tranfer to the county in 1997. This densely industrialized 97 acre site was an important part of the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex, manufacturing bomb components such as neutron generator fission triggers...
One of three major Department of Energy nuclear complex sites in Ohio, the Diffusion Plant enriched uranium for use as fuel in power plants, nuclear submarines, and nuclear weapons. High Enrichment Uranium operations ceased in 1991, and low enrichment for commercial power plant fuel continued until...
A nuclear fusion research lab, owned by the Department of Energy, and operated by Princeton University. Facilities include the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, the Princeton Beta Experiment, and the Current Drive Experiment. On 72 acres in Princeton, employing around 800 people.
Project Chariot was the code-name for a proposed excavation project, to build a harbor on the west coast of Alaska, using nuclear bombs, and was part of the Plowshare Program, to develop engineering uses for nuclear technology. The project was never executed, but preliminary studies were made,...
For many years the largest uranium mill in the nation operated here, in the center of one of the largest uranium mining areas in the country. It operated from 1958 to 1985, though it continued to mine uranium from the groundwater inside the flooded mines until 2002. At its peak, the mill processed...
An underground nuclear test took place at this site in 1973, to investigate the possibility of using nuclear explosions to extract natural gas from low grade deposits. The test, the last in the Plowshare Program, called Rio Blanco, was performed by the Atomic Energy Commission and two corporate...
Tailings from a Western Nuclear uranium mine, currently undergoing clean-up as part of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act Project. The site covers approximately 170 acres. The tailings and debris were relocated to a UMETCO Title II disposal site in the nearby Gas Hills area.
Now officially a remediated wildlife area, Rocky Flats was one of the seven original primary nuclear weapons component facilities. The 6,550-acre site, 16 miles from downtown Denver, had a heavily industrialized 384-acre complex surrounded by a mostly undeveloped buffer zone. For over 30 years,...
An underground nuclear detonation took place at this site in 1969, to investigate the possibility of using nuclear explosions to extract natural gas from low grade deposits. The test, a Plowshare Program experiment called Project Rulison, was performed by the Atomic Energy Commission and two...
Two nuclear detonations performed in a subterranean salt dome formation in Mississippi, as part of a 1960's Atomic Energy Commission Test. The test program, called Project Dribble, called for creating an underground cavity, using a nuclear bomb to do so, then later detonating a second nuclear...
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, (SONGS), between Los Angeles and San Diego, is one of two nuclear power plants directly on the West Coast of the United States (the other is the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, in Central California). San Onofre is on a narrow strip of land between...
Located in Livermore, California, adjacent to the Lawrence Livermore National Lab Complex, this Sandia facility employs about 1,000 people. It was established in 1956 to support Lawrence Livermore's nuclear testing program (Sandia Lab, based at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico was established...
In the 1970's, the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS, aka "whoops") began the largest nuclear power plant construction project in U.S. history: reactors 1, 2, and 4 at Hanford, and reactors 3 and 5 at Satsop, west of Olympia. As the budget swelled to $24 billion, and public opinion...
The Savannah River Site is a 310-square-mile Department of Energy (DOE) facility located on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River. It is one of the major nuclear materials processing plants in the United States, and is operated by the Westinghouse Company. The Savannah River Site (SRS) has...
Seneca is a munitions storage site in upstate New York, that is being cleaned up and converted to civilian use. The 11,000-acre base was an explosives, chemical weapons, and hazardous material supply depot, with 519 ammunition storage igloos and over 20 large warehouses. Weapons were also disposed...
One of the nation's six original low-level radioactive waste sites, Sheffield was opened in 1967, was filled to permitted capacity in 1978, and was subsequently closed. For much of its life it was operated by US Ecology, a division of American Ecology, which also operated the first commercial...
The first large-scale commercial nuclear power plant in the country opened in 1957, and was decommissioned in 1982. The reactor was taken to Hanford, Washington for disposal. The site is adjacent to a two reactor power plant built in 1976 and 1986, the Beaver Valley Power Plant, still operating on...
A 77-acre disposal cell containing the tailings and buildings from a former uranium mill originally built by Kerr-McGee in 1954, and operated until 1963. The mill is on Navajo Nation land, in the town of Shiprock, and next to the San Juan River. The DOE consolidated the contamination at the mill...
One of two major underground nuclear tests in Nevada that were performed off the Nevada Test Site. Conducted in 1963, Shoal was an experiment to study earthquake effects. A 12 kiloton bomb was detonated 1,200 feet below the surface. The site now is unmarked and unfenced, though radioactivity...
The Slick Rock Uranium Disposal Cell in Burro Canyon is one of around 20 similar radioactive waste disposal cells in the USA created to entomb the remains of former uranium processing operations. The cell is 900 feet long and covers 12 acres, and contains over a million dry tons of waste material,...
Two adjacent uranium mills operated here and have been mostly erased, as part of the federal government’s Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act (UMTRA). What is know today as Slick Rock East was the first mill here, built in 1931, and used to extract radium salts and vanadium. In 1945 the site was...
The Split Rock Mill was a uranium mill in Jefferson City, operated by Western Nuclear Inc. from 1957 to 1981. In 1988 the mill facilities were demolished and buried in a prepared area at the millsite. The town went from a population of 4,000 to 60 in ten years. The mill and mine site are undergoing...
This uranium disposal cell, built to contain the wastes from a uranium processing mill that operated here from 1962 to 1965, is unique as it is completely buried. The 315,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and debris was placed in the bottom of an adjacent open pit uranium mine, which was then...