Amchitka Island, Alaska, was at one time an integral player in the nation's defense program. Located in the North Pacific Ocean in the Aleutian Island archipelago, the island was intermittently inhabited by several key government agencies, including the U.S. Army, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (predecessor agency to the U.S. Department of Energy), and the U.S. Navy. Since 1993, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has conducted extensive investigations on Amchitka to determine the nature and extent of contamination resulting from historic nuclear testing. The uninhabited island was the site of three high-yield nuclear tests from 1965 to 1971. These test locations are now part of the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Operations Office's Environmental Management Program. In the summer of 2001, the DOE launched a large-scale remediation effort on Amchitka to perform agreed-upon corrective actions to the surface of the island. Due to the lack of resources available on Amchitka and logistical difficulties with conducting work at such a remote location, the DOE partnered with the Navy and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to share certain specified costs and resources. Attempting to negotiate the partnerships while organizing and implementing the surface remediation on Amchitka proved to be …

Remote sensing images provide useful physical information, revealing such features as geological structure, vegetation, drainage patterns, and variations in consolidated and unconsolidated lithologies. That technology has been applied to the failed Sierra Blanca (Faskin Ranch) shallow burial low-level radioactive waste disposal site selected by the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority. It has been re-examined using data from LANDSAT satellite series. The comparison of the earlier LANDSAT V (5/20/86) (30-m resolution) with the later new, higher resolution ETM imagery (10/23/99) LANDSAT VII data (15-m resolution) clearly shows the superiority of the LANDSAT VII data. The search for surficial indications of evidence of fatal flaws at the Sierra Blanca site utilizing was not successful, as it had been in the case of the earlier remote sensing analysis of the failed Fort Hancock site utilizing LANDSAT V data. The authors conclude that the tectonic activity at the Sierra Blanca site is much less recent and active than in the previously studied Fort Hancock site. The Sierra Blanca site failed primarily on the further needed documentation concerning a subsurface fault underneath the site and environmental justice issues. The presence of this fault was not revealed using the newer LANDSAT VII data. Despite this …

The primary objective of the investigation was to confirm the presence and determine the location of a cache of 30 to 60 buried 55-gallon drums that were allegedly dumped along the course of the pre-existing, northsouth diversion ditch (NSDD) adjacent to permitted landfills at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Kentucky. The ditch had been rerouted and was being filled and re-graded at the time of the alleged dumping. Historic information and interviews with individuals associated with alleged dumping activities indicated that the drums were dumped prior to the addition of other fill materials. In addition, materials alleged to have been dumped in the ditch, such as buried roofing materials, roof flashing, metal pins, tar substances, fly ash, and concrete rubble complicated data interpretation. Some clean fill materials have been placed over the site and graded. This is an environment that is extremely complicated in terms of past waste dumping activities, construction practices and miscellaneous landfill operations. The combination of site knowledge gained from interviews and research of existing site maps, variable frequency EM data, classical total magnetic field data and optimized GPR lead to success where a simpler less focused approach by other investigators using EM-31 and EM-61 electromagnetic methods …

A fact sheet discussing the economic needs of older women, their sources of income, and the gender wage gap by race and ethnicity.

As part of the Research and Development phase of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) program, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) has set itself the goal of explaining the physico-chemical evolution of the Riverton site on the basis of the already collected field data at the site (Tokunaga and Narasimhan, 1982, Smith and Moed, 1982; White et al., 1984). The predictive aspects as well as addressing the question of critical quantity of field data have to be considered during the design phase of the project as a joint effort between the LBL team and the construction engineers. At the present time, LBL is in the process of completing the Research and Development phase of the work. As of this writing, the development of an appropriate set of mathematical models has been completed. The computations of the soil-water regime at the upper tailings surface, involving climatological factors is nearing completion. Computations of chemical transport are still in progress. This paper is devoted to a description of the key mathematical issues, the mathematical models that are needed to address these issues and a discussion of the model results pertaining to the soil water regime at the tailings-atmosphere interface. 11 references, 3 …