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Workers to start some maintenance, construction at Parks Township nuclear waste dump | TribLIVE.com
Valley News Dispatch

Workers to start some maintenance, construction at Parks Township nuclear waste dump

Stephanie Ritenbaugh
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Courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The Shallow Land Disposal Area is off Route 66 in Parks Township.

People near the nuclear waste dump in Parks Township will start to see some activity as the Army Corps of Engineers prepares to excavate the area.

Over the next few months, the Army Corps’ Pittsburgh District said, more workers will be on hand performing maintenance such as repairing fencing, drainage, clearing trees and removing aged solar panels at the 44-acre dump along Route 66.

The site along the Kiski River in Armstrong County is formally known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area.

The Army Corps on Wednesday said the increased site activity, which will include some new construction — such as buildings to enclose the trench excavations and process excavated material for off-site shipment, a wastewater treatment plant and an on-site laboratory — will continue until the end of next year.

Physical remediation is expected to start in 2025.

Cleanup is estimated to cost more than $500 million.

Project manager Steve Vriesen said they are working on refining how long it will take to complete the project, but early estimates are five to seven years.

“We’ll look for ways to reduce that schedule if we can, but that’s probably the best estimate we have until we complete the remedial design and get a better understanding of how the work will progress.”

The dump received radioactive and chemical waste from the defunct Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., also known as NUMEC, in Apollo and Parks Township from about 1960 through the early 1970s.

NUMEC and its successors, the Atlantic Richfield Co. and Babcock & Wilcox, which is now BWX Technologies, produced nuclear fuels for Navy submarines and commercial nuclear power plants and other products.

Cleanup plans have been in the works since the 1990s.

The contamination includes uranium 235, which has a half-life of 7 million years.

“We also want to ensure our workers are safe and well-trained. Therefore, residents may see workers training on safety procedures and processes,” the Army Corps said. “The training is designed to protect the workers’ health and welfare and the community surrounding the site. The training will also ensure workers are operationally prepared prior to the start of site remediation.”

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