Publication Laka-library:
A Mountain Of Waste 50 Years High (1992)
| Author | NIRS |
| Date | April 1992 |
| Classification | 3.01.4.10/32 (UNITED STATES - WASTE - GENERAL) |
| Front | 
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From the publication:
A Mountain Of Waste Fifty Years High R. Roger Pryor Executive Director Missouri Coalition for the Environment 6267 Delmar St. Louis, MO 63130 Welcome to St. Louis! On April 24, 1942, fifty years ago, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, near downtown St. Louis, began experimenting with uranium ore in an effort to produce tons of purified uranium. Mallinckrodt succeeded after only 50 days, and went on to produce all the uranium used in the world's first nuclear chain reaction, below Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, in December of that year. The Atomic Age had begun. Mallinckrodt continued processing uranium and thorium throughout World War II as a part of the highly secretive Manhattan Project, leading to the Trinity atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Mallinckrodt's uranium division operated near downtown St. Louis for 15 years and then moved across the Missouri River to Weldon Spring in St. Charles County; that plant remained in use until1967. That is, from 1942 till1967- for about 25 years - Mallinckrodt Chemical Works processed uranium and thorium as the base materials used for the stockpiling of nuclear weapons. And radioactive wastes were created and stockpiled as well. The wastes have yet to be permanently isolated. Instead they continue to be transported from place to place, sometimes spilling along transport routes and often migrating from their temporary locations by the action of wind and water. The story of the St. Louis wastes is similar to the story of radioactive wastes all over the country: in 1946 the government obtained, through condemnation, a 22- acre farm next to the St. Louis Airport and proceeded trucking the wastes there from downtown, around the clock, for a. dozen years. That waste has since been carted and spilled hither and yon within suburban St. Louis, resulting in a significant number of contaminated residential and industrial sites, waterways, and truck and rail routes all now requiring cleanup. In addition, some of the St. Louis wastes were shipped to Colorado, Ohio, and New York, thereby extending the trail of radioactive contamination from this hub. Sad to say, fifty years later, we still have here in St. Louis some of the very first radioactive wastes of the Atomic Age. That is the reason we are meeting here today. The issue of nuclear waste - from bombs, power plants and all other sources - is as far from resolution today as it was fifty years ago.
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