A company called U.S. Ecology Inc. (formerly called Nuclear Engineering Co.) maintained a dump for radioactive wastes near Beatty, Nevada about a hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas for decades. The dump was opened in 1962 as the first federally licensed low-level radioactive waste dump. Contaminated tools and laboratory equipment, protective clothing, machine parts, medical isotopes and other materials from nuclear reactors were accepted by the dump. The dump also received other hazardous waste including chemicals and old transformers containing polychlorinated biphenyls. Twenty two trenches were dug on the site up to one hundred feet deep and eight hundred feet long. They were capped with up to ten feet of clay and dirt.
The dump had been plagued by many problems such as leaky shipments and staff taking contaminated tools and building materials out of the dump for personal use. The operating license for the dump was temporarily suspended in the 1970s for the mishandling of shipments. Federal documents indicate that forty million seven hundred thousand cubic feet of radioactive materials were buried at the dump before 1992 when the dump was closed. The Federal government mandated that individual states had to maintain their own nuclear waste dumps or use dumps maintained by an association of states. The company lost its license and had to close the dump. The dump was part of eighty acres that were turned over to the state in 1997 to be administered by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.
On Sunday, October 18, there was an underground fire in Trench 14 of the dump. Trench 14 is a pit in which containers of low-level radioactive waste were buried. White smoke poured out of the ground and then multiple underground explosions occurred which spewed more smoke and debris in the air, leaving a crater twenty feet by thirty feet. Water and heavily corroded fifty five gallon metal drums were found in the crater. Debris from the blast was spread almost two hundred feet. Several metal drums were found outside of the facility fence.
Nevada authorities are not sure exactly what is in Trench 14 that caught fire but they said that it burned "very hot." Gamma radiation detectors were flown over the site but did not record elevated levels of radiation. Radiation detectors were carried up to the edge of the location of the fire and explosions by National Guard soldiers wearing protective gear to see if heavier radioactive particles had been blown out of the hole but also recorded no abnormal radiation. There is some concern that recent wet weather might have caused water to penetrate the ground. State records of the contents of the site are being checked to see if any known contents of Trench 14 could have reacted with water to cause the fire and explosions.
The state was supposed to be monitoring and maintaining the dump but investigative reporters found out that the state legislature took five hundred thousand dollars out of the fund for monitoring and risk mitigation at the Beatty dump and put it in the general fund to help balance the state budget. Despite the fire and explosions and the withdrawal of funds by the legislature, the state lawmakers insist that the site monitoring fund is sufficient. My question is sufficient for what? This is a chronically troubled site that just suffered an accident that might have been prevented. I suggest the Nevada legislature restore the pilfered money and choose a less dangerous way to balance the state budget.
Old U.S. Ecology nuclear waste dump, ten miles southeast of Beatty, Nevada:
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