NASA has begun decommissioning its only nuclear reactor test facility in the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer has more:
Transcript
NASA has begun decommissioning its only nuclear reactor test facility
in the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer has more:
The Plum Brook Test Reactor near Sandusky, Ohio was designed to study the
effects of radiation on materials used in space flight. It operated for 11
years and was shut down in 1973 after NASA decided not to pursue manned
flights to Mars. The two reactors at the site will both be removed and
sent to low-level waste disposal facilities in North Carolina and Utah.
Keith Peecook is NASA Plum Brook’s Senior Project Engineer. He says the
agency chose to clean up the site to the highest level of safety.
“A family could take up residence on this site – could live on the site – raising their crops – drinking the groundwater, and the level of exposure that would result from the past history of the site would still not represent a health risk to them.”
De-commissioning should be complete by 2007. The Plum Brook test reactor
cost about 15-million dollars to build. It will cost almost 165-million
dollars to demolish.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Schaefer.