Maxey Flats Radioactive Waste Site, Kentucky

Maxey Flats is a closed and monitored commercial radioactive waste site. From 1963 to 1977, radioactive waste from hundreds of sites, including research labs, hospitals, and government sources, was transported here and disposed of in 46 unlined trenches, up to 680 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. Maxey Flats was the second of the first six commercial radioactive waste sites opened in the United States, following the opening of the Beatty, Nevada site the year before. Nine years after it opened, the state found that it was leaking radionuclides into an adjacent river. Two years later, plutonium was detected off site, and the state shut it down in 1977, with 4.5 million cubic feet of radioactive waste left on site. It became an EPA Superfund site in 1986. Now, plutonium and other transuranic wastes are banned from such "low-level" radioactive waste sites. Operated for much of its life by US Ecology, a division of American Ecology Incorporated. Remedial action has been extensive, and included the installation of a plastic geo-membrane over the site.