The United States Nuclear Factories

Abstract

In order to arm itself with nuclear weapons, the US government mined, refined, and transported uranium products at well over 1,000 sites across the nation and in the process left levels of nuclear and chemical contamination that have become the primary mission of the Office of Environmental Management within the DOE. Nine of these sites, which are the focus of this book, have received about 90 % of the DOE’s waste management budget of about $6.5 billion a year.

When the WWII ended, the USA, many European nations, Russia, and several other nations turned to atoms for peace. Over 400 operating nuclear power reactors exist in the world, with the USA, France, and Japan responsible for more than half of them. The USA has 104 operating plants at over 60 locations, and these plants not only generate electricity but also store used fuel on-site.

This chapter summarizes the decisions and actions that built the US nuclear weapons and energy factories and discusses the environmental legacy that will need to be managed into the foreseeable future at major DOE sites and at nuclear power-generating stations where commercial fuel nuclear waste is currently being stored. The costs of managing waste at several of the DOE sites already constitute the most expensive environmental management projects in the world, and the political, social, and technical challenges of the managing the nuclear factories are daunting and unprecedented.