From Atomic Dump to Tourist Draw

WELDON SPRING, Mo. —  They had a little time after picking peaches and before swimming, so Marie and Tom Burrows decided to take their grandson Zack to America’s newest tourist attraction: An enormous pile of radioactive waste.

His flip-flops flapping as he ran, 9-year-old Zack Aiello scrambled up the mini-mountain of boulders that entombs waste from decades of bomb making: TNT, asbestos, arsenic, lead and, above all, uranium, purified here in this St. Louis suburb to power the Atomic Age. From the top of the mound, seven stories up, Zack scanned the sprawl of the dump. “Cool,” he judged.

“Am I glowing?” his grandma teased, laughing.

A butterfly darted by. Zack gave chase over the waste pile. The Burrows lingered at the top, admiring the view.

“If you have to have this here,” Tom Burrows said, “you might as well enjoy it.”

Talk about a tourist hot spot. After a cleanup that has lasted 16 years and cost nearly $1 billion, the U.S. Department of Energy opened Weldon Spring to the public last week. Visitors can hike up the nuclear dump or check out the Geiger counters in a new museum, set up in a building that was once used to check uranium workers for contamination.

A six-mile bike trail on the property will open soon, winding past the massive waste “containment cell” and along an old limestone quarry that just a decade ago was packed with radioactive rubble, TNT residue and crumpled metal drums oozing chemicals.

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U.S. Hopes to Encourage Tourism at Waste Sites

Weldon Spring is the first of more than 120 industrial sites in the U.S. nuclear weapon complex to near complete cleanup. Even after billions of dollars of high-tech scrubbing, many of them, like Weldon Spring, will retain a radioactive repository. But federal officials maintain that when the waste is entombed between thick layers of clay and rock, it’s safe for the public to visit.

Indeed, if the experiment here works, they hope to encourage tourism at such sites around the nation.

At a time of fierce debate about the proposed nuclear repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, proponents say that giving public tours of containment cells may offer reassurance that radioactivity can be controlled.

In an age when the governor of South Carolina threatens to lie down in the road to block plutonium shipments, bringing Boy Scout troops to explore a nuclear dump may send a comforting signal that the waste can be managed.

Politicians in a dozen states have protested transportation routes that would ship nuclear material through their turf. But at Weldon Spring, families will soon be able to hike through a complex where clumps of yellow uranium ore were scattered casually about as recently as the mid-1980s. Kids from the high school half a mile down the street can picnic atop 1.5 million cubic yards of nuclear waste.

“If you put up a fence, all that communicates is fear,” said Pam Thompson, the Weldon Spring project manager. “The only way to defeat fear is knowledge.”

To some critics, that smacks of propaganda.

The Weldon Spring museum lays out every detail of the cleanup process, down to a photo of a worker mowing the lawn in full protective gear and respirator. Visitors can feel the impermeable synthetic liners used in the containment cell, which covers 45 acres. They can study models showing how the waste is trapped in the center of the dump, surrounded by clay and stone barriers up to 40 feet thick.

Yet there’s little information about why such elaborate precautions are necessary--little about the danger of radiation, the cancers many uranium workers suffered, the environmental damage caused by federal employees chucking radioactive waste in open-air lagoons through much of the 1950s and ‘60s.

“There is nothing glamorous about the history of Weldon Spring,” said Dr. Daniel McKeen, a local pathologist who has long raised health concerns about the site. An exhibit focused on the heroics of the cleanup effort “really offends me,” McKeen added.

State officials bristle as well, complaining that the museum may make people think that every scrap of waste from decades of weapon production has been locked inside the cell. In truth, uranium persists, at low levels, along a spring in a nearby wildlife refuge. TNT from a World War I ordnance factory at Weldon Spring has been found in drinking water two miles away. Groundwater near the uranium plant is contaminated with a dangerous chemical called trichloroethylene. And soil and water on the site and off will need to be monitored for tens of thousands of years to make sure the containment cell does not leak.

“This whole ribbon-cutting ceremony totally distracts from the remaining work that needs to be done,” said Ron Kucera, deputy director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

Added Kay Drey, a local environmental activist: “This is an unbelievable creation. The place should be a tourist repellent. Yet they may be able to talk people into thinking that all things radioactive are good.”

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An Emphasis on Perils of Radioactive Waste

Thompson insists that’s not her goal. In fact, she says, opening Weldon Spring to tourism is an effort to emphasize, not minimize, the perils of radioactive waste. By integrating the dump into the fast-growing suburban community that surrounds it, Thompson hopes to keep the public aware of what’s buried under the huge mound of rocks--and why they must keep a close eye on it. By inviting school tours and family visits, she hopes to ensure that each new generation will respect the deadly power of the waste in their backyard.

“If we want people to be protected and to keep the area protected, we need to get them involved,” she said. “You don’t do that by keeping everything locked behind closed doors.”

In the past, the Department of Energy’s first instinct might have been to surround the site with barbed wire. But in recent years, officials have begun to worry that locking the danger out of sight might push it out of the public’s mind as well. They point to tragedies like Love Canal, where homes in a neighborhood of Niagara Falls, N.Y., were built atop a buried chemical waste dump.

“One of the great fears all of us have is that people will forget,” said Kai Lee, who chairs a panel on managing radioactive sites for the National Academy of Sciences.

“You have to expect that the controls you put in place [to keep the waste safe] will fail,” added John Applegate, a member of the panel. “You have to be sure that in the future, people know exactly what’s there and what you did to it.”

Written records, of course, are one way of preserving the information. The Internet is another. But some experts say an oral tradition--facts passed from one generation to the next--is vital, because files tend to get lost or forgotten and Web pages may be inaccessibly obsolete by the time they’re needed.

“I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone to look at documents about a toxic site and it’s, ‘Golly, Gladys lost her key to that file cabinet,’ or ‘Wasn’t that the one that washed away in the flood?’ ” said Jim Werner, who directed research into long-term stewardship of radioactive sites for the Clinton administration.

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Open-Door Policy at Site a New Approach

The open-door policy at Weldon Spring represents a novel approach to keeping the story alive. “I don’t know if it’s the right answer. I don’t think anyone knows,” Werner said. “This is definitely unplowed territory.”

For the next few months, while the bike path is being built, visitors to Weldon Spring must make appointments so they can be escorted up the cell, wearing orange vests and safety goggles. Once the heavy equipment is gone, however, those restrictions will be lifted. The fence and the parking lot guard station have already been torn down. There are no plans to post security on site; officials say the cell can withstand even a terrorist truck bomb without releasing radiation.

Such assurances don’t calm everyone. One tourist at the site last week, a young mother who had just moved nearby, noted in the visitor’s log that she was “curious and afraid” about the looming waste heap. Another local said with an uneasy chuckle that he doesn’t plan a visit any time soon. “I’d give it a few years,” he said. “There’s a lot of nasty stuff out there.”

Still, many here in St. Charles County, which hugs the Missouri River north of St. Louis, view the new tourist attraction with more excitement than trepidation. The opening ceremony last week drew 200, despite oppressive heat. Since then, scores of visitors have overwhelmed the staff. “It’s become quite a madhouse,” said Wendy Drnec, community relations manager.

William Selinger, a 58-year-old manufacturing engineer, took his wife, Marilyn, to the top of the cell and pronounced it “very nice,” although he did worry that the long, sloping sides might entice snowboarders come winter.

As for Zack, he allowed that he would have preferred a morning at Six Flags St. Louis amusement park, screaming his way through the roller coasters. But the waste dump, he decided, wasn’t a bad way to pass an hour. His grandparents, meanwhile, were fascinated.

“Any time you say ‘nuclear,’ it makes some people uptight,” Tom Burrows said. “But I think it’s pretty neat.”