Word: aec
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...uranium-producing town until the ore petered out in the mid-1960s. The villain is uranium "tailings" -the gray, sandy debris that piled up in small mountains beside the mills as refuse from the mining operations. The tailings were known to contain some residual radiation, but below levels the AEC then considered to be a health or safety hazard. As the town boomed along with its uranium mines, Grand Junction contractors seized on the tailings as a convenient and cheap source of landfill and concrete mix. Over the years, thousands of tons of tailings went into the construction of schools...
Cleft Palates. By 1961, says the AEC, "form letters" were mailed to health officials warning that while the agency did not have regulatory jurisdiction over the tailings, their radium content could be hazardous; health officials, however, claim they never received the letters. In 1966 the Colorado state health department attached test film badges to several buildings in downtown Grand Junction; the badges promptly turned black from radioactivity. This led the state to pass legislation requiring contractors to get permits before using tailings in any project...
What to Do? Remedies are not easy. Of course, entire structures can be torn down, but not many people want to do that. Alternatively, hot structures can be jacked up and the fill replaced with dirt. But all this is expensive, and neither the state nor the AEC has been eager to pick up the tab. The whole problem is confused by the continuing debate about how much radiation is dangerous-an incredibly difficult decision since effects may not show up for several generations...
...underground water seep out of the radioactive blast area? Not for several thousand years, says Dr. James Carothers, and AEC's scientific adviser on the island. As to Cannikin's effect on wildlife, the body count so far includes two sea otters, two seals, 13 birds of various species and an undetermined number of fish. In addition, one peregrine falcon nest and three eagle nests-all unoccupied-were destroyed when the ground heaved around them...
...AEC believes that things went so well that it is now cautiously weighing the pros and cons of a few nuclear shocks to loosen (for commercial use) natural gas deposits some 5,000 ft. to 7.000 ft. under Colorado and Wyoming...