After eighteen months, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it is ready to resume the cleanup of the 44-acre nuclear waste dump outside of Apollo in Parks Township, Armstrong County. The former NUMEC site holds residual waste from the company’s production of nuclear fuel for the Navy, for power plants, and for other federal nuclear programs.
At a public meeting yesterday, the Corps announced that there is a contract in place and the funding to get the $500 million project going again. A plan will be developed over the next year, cleanup facilities will be constructed in 2020, and the ten-year project to remove the materials from ten deep trenches will take another ten years.
Meanwhile, the Corps says ongoing testing of the groundwater at the site shows radioactive elements are below federal and state drinking water standards and no migration off the dump site. However, there is radioactive beryllium has infiltrated the network of underground coal mines beneath the surface.
The dump site is located off Route 66 near Kiskimere Street, just outside of Apollo.
