The Energy Department said Thursday it has marked a major milestone on cleanup of the Double Tracks plutonium dispersal site in Nevada, which after 20 years the agency has cleaned up to U.S. Air Force standards.
Double Tracks, located north of DOE’s Nevada National Security Site on the Nevada Test and Training Range, was one of four a 1963 Operation Roller Coaster plutonium dispersion tests conducted by the Pentagon, the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission, and the United Kingdom.
“Completion of environmental characterization and remediation at Double Tracks marks the first time a plutonium dispersion site on the NTTR has reached the completion phase outlined in the legally binding Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order,” DOE’s Office of Environmental Management Office stated in a press release. “This completion does not mean the sites are releasable for public use; however, it does allow for a less restrictive management of the sites.”
The object of these tests was to determine whether an atomic bomb could accidentally be set off by a conventional explosion. In Operation Roller Coaster, the agencies involved detonated four atomic weapons and determined there had been no nuclear yield. However, the tests contaminated the soil with radioactive materials.
Cleanup began in 1994 but was halted for an extended period to allow for further data collection, and work was not declared finished until this year, EM stated. The office has a small presence at the Nevada National Security Site, which is managed for DOE by the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
Among other things, the former weapons-test site in Nevada includes disposal facilities for low-level radioactive waste.
