A Pile of Nuclear Waste Now a Tourist Attraction in Weldon Springs, Missouri

May 28, 2013 34 comments

In Saint Charles County, Missouri, near Weldon Spring, adjacent to Highway 40, lies an enormous mound of rocks, rising out of the ground like an ancient burial tomb. Underneath it lies tons of hazardous waste produced by a chemical plant that once stood in its place. Today, Weldon Spring draws thousands of curious visitors each year. They climb to the top of the 75-foot tall dome to read the placards that tell the story of the sad history of communities that disappeared in 1940 to make way for the world’s largest explosives factory.

Between 1940 and 1941, the US Army purchased over 17,000 acres of land in Saint Charles County, just outside of St. Louis On those land happened to sit three pretty towns with rolling wooded hills - Hamburg, Howell, and Toonerville. They were immediately evacuated. Hundreds of homes, businesses, churches, schools and any other buildings in the area were either demolished or burned and within a few months the three towns ceased to exist. A massive factory was erected to manufacture TNT and DNT in order to supply Allied troops in the Word War II. The Weldon Spring Ordnance Works, operated by Atlas Powder Company, employed more than 5,000 people and contained more than 1,000 buildings. By the time the plant ceased production on Aug. 15, 1945, the day the Japanese surrendered, it had produced more than 700 million pounds of TNT.

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After the war the Army began selling off pieces of the land. The State of Missouri acquired 7,000 acres, while the University of Missouri bought another 8,000 acres, which was later sold to the Conservation Department. These pieces of property are today the Busch Memorial Conservation Area and the Weldon Spring Conservation Area.

A small patch of land – about 2,000 acres - was retained by the United States Atomic Energy Commission. It was there the Commission built a uranium ore processing plant in 1955. The Weldon Spring Uranium Feed Mill Plant, operated by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works of St. Louis, processed raw uranium ore into “yellow cake,” or concentrated ore which was shipped to other sites.

The processing plant operated until 1966. During the Vietnam War the Army planned to use part of the old uranium processing facilities to produce Agent Orange, a herbicide used to defoliate jungle during the war. The Army later abandoned the plan without ever producing the chemical at Weldon Spring. The site sat abandoned for more than 20 years, but still contained contaminated equipment and hazardous chemicals. Waste lagoons were filled with thousands of gallons of water contaminated with radioactive wastes and heavy industrial metals.

Beginning in the 1980's, the U.S. Department of Energy began extensive decontamination of the area, eventually building a gigantic waste disposal cell to entomb the waste materials. The official name of this site is the Weldon Spring Site Remedial Action Project (WSSRAP).

Completed in 2001, the mountainous structure covers 45 acres and stores 1.5 million cubic yards of hazardous material. Stairs lead up to the top of the cell where there is a viewing platform and plaques that provide information about the local area, the history of the site, and the construction of the waste disposal cell. Visitors can also visit the 9,000-square-foot interpretive center housed in a building at the base of the cell that was once used to check workers for radioactivity. Incidentally, the top of the Weldon Spring waste disposal cell is the highest point in St. Charles County.

There is a similar nuclear waste dome in on Enewetak Atoll

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Satellite view of Weldon Spring Site Remedial Action Project (WSSRAP)

Sources: Ruralmissouri, Vice, Wikipedia

Comments

  1. Possibly the world's dullest tourist attraction...

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    1. Maybe you need to think before you comment. It provided jobs for myself and many others in St. Charles county for a lot of years.

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    2. that doesn't mean its not boring.

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    3. Watch your language. If you have nothing nice to say, then shut-it!
      God help you, you cannot help how you are.

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    4. Has anyone ever used a Geiger counter there

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  2. I went to high school next door to this structure. At the time it was still a dilapidated refinery we called the equadome or something like that. I still have a radiation sign from the back fence hanging in my garage from about 1990. I didnt know about this project until recently though.

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  3. You can't trick me government!

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  4. It seems that the govt used, and contaminated many areas in and around the St. Louis area, I grew up in North County within a few blocks of cold water creek in Berkeley. We played in it all the time. Until recently I assumed that my moms passing from a brain tumor was just the luck of the draw, but maybe not

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  5. I was disgusted when I went to attend my child's fieldtrip. The paper I received stated they were going to Weldon Springs to learn about rocks. To take children to such a place is bad enough, then to leave out that it is a nuclear waste dump for parents to make an educated decision on whether their kids should go...just wrong. There are many free (and much more interesting) places to take our children that pose NO POSSIBLE THREAT. Another reason why I am disgusted I public "education".

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    1. our government still dumping there

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  6. What about the thorium processing? I grew up there and have battled two types of Leukemia, The goings on there most likely caused my condition. Put that on a plaque up there!

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  7. A very reliable source explained how the ALS Foundation was shut-down from attempting to study the area for an unusually high number of cases.

    What gives on this?
    Is anyone following up with well inspections?
    I'd be interested to know

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  8. I went for the first time today, and one thing that ran thru my mind, of all the people that cleaned it up, are there any still alive?

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    1. I am and many of them are .. one of them died in an explosion at another site.

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    2. they used masks and full body protection suits to do the job.

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  9. army still disposes of hazardous waste. in this area. just earlier this,spring,the Quincy il unit with ss king brought materials down un placard on our state highway . I have audio account of his ordeal. they ran with no permits as is typical army standard according to him but didn't find out the true hazards of his trip till he arrived.. why put our soldiers and civilians at risk.. what if something happened and his about was he didn't know the hazards of his load until he arrived in Weldon springs

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  10. I went there recently (October) with a geiger-counter watch. Negligible radiation levels. Negligible. As in, cellphone levels negligible, as in, radioactive by technicality. Look up the word. Read the definition. Read it again and again until you don't feel like spreading ignorant hysteria. Yeah, looking at you, crazy person who went there on a field trip. I'm sure the local zoo has some nice animal pens your kid can safely fall into.

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    Replies
    1. Cellphone radiation is electromagnetic. As in non-ionizing. Not at ALL the same as radiation from a radioactive source. If you're going to try to educate people, learn about it yourself first.

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  11. I don't know if this will ever get read as it seems it has been awhile since the last comment. My great Aunt worked at the actual Ordnance Plant in the 40's and I am trying to find more information about it not the clean up. She lived in KC and came out here to work. No one in my family knows any information, I have looked up Atlas Powder Company and have come to a dead end. Were people recruited to work there, where did they live. Just curious.

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    1. I recommending contacting the Army Library at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO. They have a limited collection of books of the area from that era that may not be in other archives and have always been willing to help Another source of info would be the historian's office at CASCOM, Ft. Lee, VA... they should have inherited the records from what we used to know as the Army Ordinance Corps.

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    2. The location of the current reserve center, as well as the surrounding acreage, was once home to a military installation nicknamed "mechanical city". It is my understanding that not only was tnt developed at the site, but also the trigger mechanisms for the nuclear weapons that were dropped on Japan following their attack on Pearl Harbor. Whether that is true or not, the installation did exist. I have personally gone on ruck marches looking for remains of it. We have a map of the original site at the unit (I drill there). There are ruins if you look deep enough in the overgrowth. Nothing left except foundations and two of the power stations that used to operate are still standing along the main strip. I imagine your aunt may have stayed in the lodging there, but beyond that, I don't know.

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  12. I used to do my field training for the Army Reserves here. I hated having to eat our MRE's sitting on the ground and rolling around in the dirt!

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    1. I too used to train at Weldon Springs while they were building this site and have been diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome that turned into Diabetes and just recently with an Immune Deficiency and am told I will have to do monthly infusions for the rest of my life. It would have been nice to know when we trained there so we could have taken precautions like maybe Iodine tablets. Waiting to see what VA is going to say.

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  13. A friend of mine who used to work for Mallinckrodt during the time they were managing the uranium concentration and milling plant said that you could walk out at night to the many unsealed settling ponds and see them glowing from the radioactive materials they contained. The ponds were sited over a karst area that allowed the ground water to be contaminated which my friend said caused the surrounding populated area to exhibit a 4x higher cancer rate than elsewhere.

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  14. It was either at Weldon Springs or the Lambert airport Superfund radiation cleanup site where a locomotive was buried because it was so heavily contaminated it couldn't be cleaned. Some observations by workers at the site would suggest that some work with highly radioactive reactor waste was taking place though there are no official admissions of this.

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  15. The locomotive was buried at Weldon springs. My brother and sister both went to Francis Howell school and both have had cancer one of which died from cancer. My brother who passed lived next to the project manager that that managed that site for the clean up. This guy went around the country and cleaned up (Covered up) the mess the government has made of our community. I worked with a 93 year old lady that her family was booted out of their homes back then, there was no paying them for it. They were in court still last I knew. She is dead now so it would be the great grand kids I guess. Im sure that whole are is still contaminated to a point. I witnessed the glowing ponds of water. This is no panic just facts. I grew up in the area and everyone I know that did has had serious health issues or dead at an early age.

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    1. That 93 year old lady did reallly well despite everyone dying young. Anecdotes are not reliable

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  16. I worked with the Army Corps of Engineers back in the early to mid 90's, while the site was being investigated. Here are the facts: the site was not only a part of the Atlas Powder company, but a part of the Manhattan Project, then a uranium processing plant after the war. Left behind was a large area of Low Level radioactive waste and Tri Nitro Toluene (TNT, explosives). It is possible that a great number of people in the St. Charles area were exposed to these and other materials over the years. If you are concerned, please let your doctor know about the potential exposure. The Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE)in Kansas City was one of the main contributors to the remediation (cleanup) of the site. You can file a Freedom of Information Act request with the ACOE to obtain more info.

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  17. Watch the documentary "The Safe Side of the Fence" - pretty good info on Mallinckrodt, the government and Weldon Sprngs

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  18. Francis Howell High School was and is right next door. Some of the old government building were used for many years as classrooms and offices. Until I finished HS in 1971 water came from a deep well. Couldn't say if they are on some other water source yet. Cancer was very common among my classmates. We had a business not far away, and I grew up working there. No cancer yet, but one brother died from diabetes, a sister from breast cancer and complications of an immune disease, and my other sister also had breast cancer.

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  19. This is known as the Golden Triangle. No doubt in my mind many of us has gotten cancer from this. No cancer ran in the family till my parents and then us kids. We all have a different kind. Classmates have passed all were young.

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  20. If you live in the Weldon Springs, Missouri Area and have weird medical issues, I recommend getting a urine test for uranium. If your piss tests hot, move away immediately. If you live in this area, you should have your levels tested at your yearly check-up. Explain to your doctor that you live near a nuclear waste clean up site, he will have no problem ordering the test. Labcorp has a uranium test for urine. People living in the area have come up with elevated uranium levels previously.

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  21. I am a Veteran and currently working with a group of Cold War Era Vets/Civilians who were tasked with the 'cleanup' of the Marshall Islands Runit Dome/cactus Crater after all the atomic testing was performed there decades previous. Out of the thousands who served, only hundreds have been located and out of that number, a vast majority have had go-rounds with various cancers and disabilities attributable to exposure to radiation. The government will not recognize them nor allow them to receive care via the VA related to their time in service in the islands. Look them up......Enewetak Atomic Cleanup Veterans. There are books at Amazon with true stories about what happened down there in those islands.

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