APOLLO (KDKA) – The Army Corps of Engineers recently secured a grant to finally cleanup nuclear waste materials at a long-debated site in Armstrong County.
Now, there’s concern there’s far more material there than they’re prepared for.
So what’s really buried there? And how dangerous is it?
When she was little girl in Apollo, Patty Ameno played near the Numec Nuclear Materials Plant and their 55-gallon drums of nuclear waste.
Numec, which made nuclear fuel for power plants and atomic submarines, buried the drums in shallow trenches at a 140-acre site in Parks Township.
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What’s concerning is that when they tried to excavate seven years ago, they found material they didn’t know was there and weren’t equipped to handle.
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Numec, or its successor, accepted nuclear waste from other sources and there are few, if any, records concerning their amount or type. Still, the corps says it’s now prepared to remove it all.
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Air monitors and ground water monitors indicate that the danger has been contained, but there is fear of the unknown and the remote possibility of a nuclear event.
“That’s not a mushroom cloud. That’s not an explosion. That’s a flash of blue light that chances are you wouldn’t even see, and every living thing from the epicenter out would start dying,” Ameno said.
Excavation should begin within the next two years and last a decade, but the corps says it will be keeping residents safe throughout.
Read more at Army Corps Of Engineers Set To Remove Nuclear Waste From Parks Twp. Site
