Nuclear wasteSecurity increases around Pennsylvania nuclear disposal site
Security around a nuclear waste site in western Pennsylvania has been upgraded, with DHS armed security guards replacing private guards around the site; the reason for the elevated security is the finding, by the Army Corps of Engineers, of more “complex” nuclear materials on the site; it was originally believed that the site contains only low-level nuclear material
Map showing location of disposal trenches at NUMEC site // Source: irmep.org
Security around a nuclear waste site in western Pennsylvania has been upgraded, with DHS armed security guards replacing private guards around the site. The reason for the elevated security is the finding, by the Army Corps of Engineers, of more “complex” nuclear materials on the site. It was originally believed that the site contains only low-level nuclear material.
TribeLivereports that the nuclear waste disposal site, located along Route 66, operated from about 1960 to the early 1970s. The former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) in Apollo and Parks used to ship nuclear and chemical waste for disposal there. The Corps took over jurisdiction of the clean-up in 2002.
Scott McConnell, spokesman for the National Protection and Programs Directorate, which is part of the DHS, said: “The elevated security measures were put in place at the request of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is managing the cleanup, and are not related to a specific threat in the area.”
The mystery around the type of nuclear materials discovered on the site was not alleviated by Candice Walters, a spokeswoman at Corps’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., who said: “We believe it is best not to discuss security measures at our sites.”
Tom Clements, nonproliferation policy director for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in Columbia, South Carolina, said: “If there are nuclear materials and equipment of concern, it’s probably a good thing that they improved site security.”
Lindsey Geisler, spokeswoman for the Department of Energy, which is responsible for the largest and most dangerous cleanups of nuclear waste, said the department takes a “graded approach at each site to ensure the protection of safeguards and security interests, meaning we aim to keep the level of security at any given site directly proportional to the needs of that site.”
The cleanup of the site was commissioned under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, which was designed to handle sites contaminated with low levels of radioactive and mixed wastes used in programs involving nuclear weapon production and peacetime nuclear activities from the 1940s through the 1960s. Originally set at $170 million, TribLive says that the Corps’ cost estimate now ranges from $250 million to $500 million for a decade-long clean-up effort.
Officials have not discussed what kind of nuclear material was discovered on the site, but the security measures indicate that clean-up crews have discovered Category I special nuclear material, which can be used in nuclear weapons or dirty bombs.
The company sending its waste to the site, NUMEC, is still a subject of bitter accusations and counter-accusations, although it closed its doors after selling the Apollo plant to Babcock & Wilcox in 1974. In the mid-1960s, the FBI and other government agencies launched an investigation into 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium which the company could not account for. The company’s president, Zalman Shapiro, was suspected of giving the uranium to Israel so it could use it to produce nuclear weapons in its Dimona reactor. Despite years of investigation, no convincing evidence was found as to what happened with the missing HEU. No charges were filed against Shapiro or NUMEC, but the cloud of suspicion was never removed, either. In August 2009, Arlen Spector, who was Shapiro’s lawyer in the 1960s but was now a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to issue a statement clearing Shapiro of all suspicion with regard to the missing uranium, but the NRC refused, stating it did “not have information that would allow it to unequivocally conclude that nuclear material was not diverted from the site…”
