Test Site cleanup to include destroying unexploded shells

Jace Radke

Friday, Feb. 4, 2005 | 9:04 a.m.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is scheduled during the next three months to detonate and destroy unexploded ammunition and ordinance found on the Nevada Test Site.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection has issued a temporary permit to the NNSA to dispose of the ordinance found at two locations within the Test Site as the government continues its environmental cleanup of the leftover infrastructure from the nation's nuclear testing program.

"Our cleanup is ongoing, and its not uncommon for us to find old munitions as we work on these industrial sites across the test site," said Kevin Rohrer, a test site spokesman.

In the past decade the Energy Department has identified 1,800 sites within the test site, about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, that are in need of environmental cleanup. The government has cleaned up 1,130 of these sites that have included leech fields, abandoned petroleum tanks, lead acid batteries and scrap metal.

"Some are just a few batteries piled together and others are pseudo-landfills on huge-acre sites," Rohrer said.

Cleanup is continuing at the two sites where unexploded ordinance was found. One of the sites was previously used as a shooting range for test site security, and the other had been previously used by the military and contains some cluster-bomb fragments, Rohrer said.

All the live ammunition will be gathered up and destroyed, Rohrer said.

The temporary permit was required from the state because the ordinance will be destroyed on the test site.