Posted on 05/02/2008 9:58:47 AM PDT by Domandred
Nearly 80 rail cars loaded with contaminated sand from Kuwait are headed toward a dump in southwestern Idaho.
American Ecology Corp. is shipping about 6,700 tons of sand containing traces of depleted uranium and lead to a hazardous waste disposal site 70 miles southeast of Boise. The sand arrived by ship at Longview, Wash., this week and company officials say loads are scheduled to begin arriving in Idaho by rail in two weeks.
Transfer of the sand to the United States was first reported this week by The Daily News in Longview.
The company has previously disposed of low-level radioactive waste and hazardous materials from U.S. military bases overseas at facilities in Idaho, Nevada and Texas, said American Ecology spokesman Chad Hyslop, who is based in Boise.
"As you can imagine, the host countries of those bases don't want the waste in their country," Hyslop said.
Neither do leaders of the Snake River Alliance, a nuclear watchdog group, who have vowed to monitor the site.
"Depleted uranium is both a toxic metal and a radioactive substance," said Andrea Shipley, the group's executive director. "That is a concern."
The sand coming to Idaho from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army Base in Kuwait, was contaminated with uranium after military vehicles and munitions caught fire during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Depleted uranium, twice as dense as lead, has been used as a component in armor plating to protect tanks and for armor-piercing projectiles.
(Excerpt) Read more at idahostatesman.com ...
I wanna know why we are taking any form of garbage from other nations (radioactive or otherwise).
I also want to know how much they are paying us to take their garbage.
YIPPEE, Nj is not the only toxic state anymore...LOL
I guess I won’t need headlights at night anymore when I ride out there .
Uh, because we put it there in the first place?
If it is depleted uranium, it is almost certainly the result of US military operations in Kuwait.
But the bad news is Larry Craig is moving to Hoboken next year .
Ok babe, you just do that for us...
If we start importing sand from the Middle East, those Arabs are gonna get REALLY rich.
No qworse that any of the other crooks here in NJ...sigh
Well, for one we have people/facilities that can properly take care of it. Two, it’s an ally. Three, it provides jobs.
It isn't especially radioactive, actually. Less so than natural uranium ore by 40% or so. That's what "depleted" means. It is poisonous and projectiles made of it tend to throw toxic powder on impact, which is why the sand is being moved. Backstop sand at indoor shooting ranges is contaminated with lead in the same way. You wouldn't want to put it in your kids' sandbox but it certainly isn't what you'd call horribly dangerous.
Didn’t we “put” it there saving their scrawny, oil-soaked a$$es???
That should be a small price to pay for them to not be under Saddams thumb.
Let them deal with it......unless they are going to be paying us in oil, then we can talk.
LOL That is funny.
You mean "how much we are paying them for the privelege of taking their waste".
Old Polish joke. Not very PC in this day and age but...
Poland has a plan for solving their engery crisis. They intend to import 6 billion curbic yard of sand from Saudia Arabia and drill for their own oil.
I guess Idaho is going drill for oil in the Kuwaity sand to fuel a nuclear power plant???
The Kuwaitis are busy pumping petro-dollars into Citigroup, Merrill, etc. propping up our investment banks during a major credit crunch.....least we can do is clean up our military base mess I think and say thanks.
Why not just dump it in the ocean somewhere? It would be dispersed perfectly and harmlessly.
This media isn't highly hazardous and will likely be handled as (LSA) low specific activity material. If'n I had to guess, the disposal fees are probably well less than a couple hundred $ per ton. The big cost is in beaurocracy, containerizing and shipping it here.
You just stole my post!!
That idea seems too easy I suppose...
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