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...
don’t they have enough desert over there to spread that crap over....??....what is wrong with us over here....sheesh....
but they don’t supply us with cheap oil after we defended them and saved thier oil fields....
Kuwait paid the coalition forces US$17 billion for their war efforts.
I guess you didn't know that.
Years ago, I worked in Middlesex, NJ. One day as I approached my workplace, I saw people in hazmat suits. Very shortly thereafter, someone excavated about 3 feet of soil from many of the small houses in that area. Seems as though there was some fill dirt used that originally came from Camp Kilmer. Word was that it was radioactive from some Manhattan Project work that had been conducted at the camp, though it could have been some other type of contamination. They piled it all up in a nearby lot and covered the mountain with plastic and tires for a long time. I don’t know what happened to it.
Taking their country back from Saddam for them!
They probably built a school on it....oops.
and they are doing what for us now...??....paid there debt and thats it til the next time....wanna keep us on your good side stroke the kitty before you need us to keep us happy....
I didn’t know that, but I’m glad you posted it.
susie
The cost of the war to the United States was calculated by the United States Congress to be $61.1 billion.[46]. About $52 billion of that amount was paid by different countries around the world: $36 billion by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf States; $16 billion by Germany and Japan (which sent no combat forces due to terms contained in the treaty that ended World War II).[47] About 25% of Saudi Arabia’s contribution was paid in the form of in-kind services to the troops, such as food and transportation.[48] U.S. troops represented about 74% of the combined force, and the global cost was therefore higher.
I WOULD SAY THEY ARE ABOUT 9 BILLION SHORT STILL...
Let’s just fly over the Taliban during a Sandstorm and drop it out of planes.
I think you'll find that this is from live fire exercise ranges in Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, not from Desert Storm.
We clean up our messes.
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.
However, also from the fine article:
In a letter to Army officials on Sept. 13, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission deemed the radiation levels "unimportant quantities" and approved the plan to dispose the sand in Idaho.
"We've received tens of thousands of tons from the U.S. military that has higher radioactive levels than this shipment," Hyslop said.
:-)
All of this is not too “green” is it? At least they didn’t choose Nevada like they usually do.
Darn, I was thinking of moving to Idaho.
The nuts are running the asylum!
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