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The Mound Advanced Technology Center in Miamisburg will receive $20 million from the economic recovery legislation to finish environmental cleanup work, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, announced Tuesday. The Mound, a former Department of Energy research site, will use the money to create 40 jobs in the region, complete the cleanup project and attract clients for its technology, science, and business park. Brown led a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators to get investment in Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites in the new stimulus bill, according to a Brown-issued press release.

The senators say increasing the annual investment in DOE nuclear cleanup sites would create 10,000 jobs at "shovel-ready" projects in New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Idaho and Washington and provide new land for energy parks, or coalitions of regional energy experts to develop advanced energy research and technology. At the Mound Site, the 306-acre site is about 95 percent complete, but short $10 million to clean up one acre and allow the city to take ownership.

May 23--MIAMISBURG -- The city's efforts to redevelop the former Mound Plant got a boost with the announcement Friday, May 23, that the U.S. House of Representatives has approved $10 million to complete the environmental cleanup of the old Cold War atomic plant. The House approved the funds Thursday night as part of the fiscal 2009 Defense Authorization Bill. It still must be approved by the Senate before it can go to the president's desk.

"Fly ash produced by the Marsa power station when it was still coal-fired, which was dumped on the cliff-edge in Bengħaisa, contained high levels of radioactivity, according to a University study. The pulverised fuel ash had "very high levels of all the radionuclides (radioactive contaminants) under test, namely K40, PB212 and PB214", the research found. The three elements are derivatives of potassium and lead. Winds and rain occasionally spill the fly ash, which was covered with soil off the cliff-edge and into the sea below. The mound is situated at the back of the Freeport on the south eastern cliff face that borders Ħal Far industrial estate. Scientific tests on the mound of fly ash were conducted five years ago by Josette Camilleri and Franco Montesin from the University's Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering and Michael Sammut from the hospital's Pathology Department. The study was published in the American journal Waste Management. "I was surprised by the reaction when it was recently revealed that fly ash from the power stations was dumped in a quarry, because everybody seems to have forgotten that radioactive fly ash produced when coal was burned at Marsa was dumped in a disused quarry at Bengħisa," Dr Camilleri said."

Reporting from Fernald Preserve, Ohio - Amid the family farms and rolling terrain of southern Ohio, one hill stands out for its precise geometry. The 65-foot-high mound stretching more than half a mile dominates a tract of northern hardwoods, prairie grasses and swampy ponds, known as the Fernald Preserve. Contrary to appearances, there is nothing natural here. The high ground is filled with radioactive debris, scooped from the soil around a former uranium foundry that produced crucial parts for the nation's nuclear weapons program. A $4.4-billion cleanup transformed Fernald from a dangerously contaminated factory complex into an environmental showcase. But it is "clean" only by the terms of a legal agreement. Its soils contain many times the natural amounts of radioactivity, and a plume of tainted water extends underground about a mile. Nobody can ever safely live here, federal scientists say, and the site will have to be closely monitored essentially forever.

Reporting from Fernald Preserve, Ohio - Amid the family farms and rolling terrain of southern Ohio, one hill stands out for its precise geometry. The 65-foot-high mound stretching more than half a mile dominates a tract of northern hardwoods, prairie grasses and swampy ponds, known as the Fernald Preserve. Contrary to appearances, there is nothing natural here. The high ground is filled with radioactive debris, scooped from the soil around a former uranium foundry that produced crucial parts for the nation's nuclear weapons program. A $4.4-billion cleanup transformed Fernald from a dangerously contaminated factory complex into an environmental showcase. But it is "clean" only by the terms of a legal agreement. Its soils contain many times the natural amounts of radioactivity, and a plume of tainted water extends underground about a mile. Nobody can ever safely live here, federal scientists say, and the site will have to be closely monitored essentially forever.

From the top of the isolated, windy plateau along the southern border of Rocky Flats, you can see the extended mass of metro Denver and, on a clear day, the distant line of the beltway around it. In anticipation of that line one day extending into the Jefferson Parkway, earth-movers have already piled huge mounds of dirt and landowners posted "Property Available" signs. But Charles McKay already owns a large chunk of the land that he and others plan to turn into the 2,000-acre Candelas, a development with more than 4,000 single-family homes and 7.2 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space that will be located in western Arvada, just below the former nuclear-weapons plant that's being turned into a wildlife refuge.

Will they or won't they? And if they do, for how long? The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) will decide whether 1.2 million cubic metres of low-level radioactive and historic waste from around Port Hope will be excavated and contained in an encapsulated mound south of Highway 401. The commission is expected to decide whether to grant a licence to Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL) to proceed with the cleanup project within the next two months. There was a lot of ground and a lot of history to cover at the one-day public hearing Wednesday. Everyone was on best behaviour as the televised and webcast proceedings, complete with English/French translators, transcript stenographers and large-screen monitors for better in-house viewing got underway at the Town Recreation Centre. As the licence requester, Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL) outlined its plans for the estimated $150-million chore ahead. The CNSC, as safety overseer of the project, had its staff there, too, formal presentations and answering questions of panel members. With 96 intervenors registered -- 43 of them with oral presentations -- it was a full day and evening for all concerned.

MOAB, Utah - Although millions of tons of Uranium tailings have been removed, some citizens of Moab are concerned that the remaining tailings may contaminate the nearby Colorado river. The river runs through town and a potential contaminatino could jeapordize drinking water. Energy Solutions were contracted to remove the mounds of tailings in 2007. "Were were moving it is to an environmentally stable location, 30 miles north of the town of Moab to a stable environment where that material can sit for thousands of years," says Energy Solutions' Project Manager, Larry Brede.

Kathy Wolf explained the bureaucratic nightmare she and her late husband experienced trying to get him the medical attention he needed after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Charlie Wolf was given only six months to live after the diagnosis, which doctors said was related to his work at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site near Denver. But he fought, surviving six years before he died earlier this year. For the Wolfs, however, brain cancer would not be their only fight. Peace of mind from the government would end up being one of their toughest battles. Kathy said she and Charlie were forced to provide mounds of complicated information in order to be eligible to receive medical compensation from the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. "They just kept asking for more and more information," said Kathy Wolf during a conference call with reporters yesterday. "Charlie was struggling with brain cancer, he was unable to speak and read, it was just a very arduous and torturous path that they put you on."

"As the new nuclear renaissance grows, so too does uranium extraction. In Niger, which boasts some of the world's richest deposits, NGOs say that the poor are being exploited for the West's 'clean energy' In the heart of the Sahara lie some of the world's largest uranium deposits. Until recently, the region had held little interest to the world's trading partners, save France. Desert tribes, predominantly Tuareg nomads, had been mostly free to roam its vast, barren expanse; living off what little bounty it had to offer. Then a few years ago, rising fuel prices and climate change revived interest in the atom."