Nuclear Ecologies: Landscapes of the Cold War
From 1945 to 1992, the U.S. Department of Defense produced over 70,000 nuclear weapons, and in doing so created a landscape of mines, mills, bombing ranges, and waste facilities that are currently estimated to entail a $216 to $400 billion environmental restoration project. For those sites that can, in fact, be “remediated,” the cost will likely exceed that of the Cold War nuclear arsenal itself. This project documents a transect of the Cold War landscape, including cratered testing sites in the Nevada desert, novel nuclear preserves where buffalo now roam on the Rocky Mountain Flats, abandoned mines on the Navajo Nation, and the birthplace of the bomb, Los Alamos, New Mexico. At each site, I photographed relevant locations, interviewed those in charge of remediation and containment, and catalogued the large scale and often sisiphysean landscape strategies that monitor, move, and attempt to contain our country’s 20th century radioactive legacy.
The Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project, located less than a miles from Arches National Park, is a 480 acre former uranium processing mill. This photo shows the site in relation to the Colorado River, into which radionuclides from the waste tailings have been leaching for decades.
A series of injection wells produces a wall of water that prevents further migration of contaminated waters. while extraction well pump contaminants into a temporary evaporation pond. This system requires erosion and flood control through an aggressive irrigation and revegetation strategy, as well as a berm to push back the floodplain.
The Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project, located less than a miles from Arches National Park, is a 480 acre former uranium processing mill. This photo shows the site in relation to the Colorado River, into which ammonia and uranium from the waste tailings have been leaching for decades.
A specialized railway was constructed to transport over 16 million tons of uranium waste pilings over 32 miles north.
The Crescent Junction Disposal Site uses below-grade tailings disposal. Windborne particle releases are controlled through daily coverings from excavated materials resulting from construction of the subsurface disposal cell. The pilings are made and remade daily. Such sites must be weeded and maintained to prevent any form of rupture to the barrier cap.
The birthplace of the bomb is an active lab with a satellite of monitoring and containment measures.
The Los Alamos Canyon provides an example of how the entire Pajarito Plateau must be continually managed and monitored. The original buildings from the Manhattan Project were sited along its length, and thus wastes were routinely dumped at undisclosed sites. While some hot spots have been located, flash floods and other erosive events threaten to uncover hidden contaminants and send them downstream.
The 2000 Los Conchas Fire (extent shown above) engulfed nearly 20% of LANL lands, and caused massive erosion throughout the Los Alamos Canyon, unburying hidden dump sites and sending contaminated sediments through to the Rio Grande, which turned black with sediment. Shown here is the upper Los Alamos Canyon and Reservoir, after burning again in the 2011 Las Conchas Fire.
The management and sampling of sediment, water, animals and even vegetation of the Pajarito Plateau is part of a larger environmental monitoring strategy to prevent spread of contaminants to local populations, but also for the drinking water and irrigation for more than 6 million people downstream who rely on the waters of the Rio Grande..
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is a former 17,000-acre Superfund, largest urban wildlife refuges, just north of Denver, CO. Design Workshop oversaw the management plan in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, U.S. Army, United States Government, and Shell Oil Company. The $2.1 billion dollar transformation converted included a massive cut and fill operation, building demolition, with large central disposal mounds. The majority of the site was restored to shortgrass prairie restoration, including the reintroduction of a herd of sixteen American bison on the site.
The plan was an early adopter of the principles of landscape ecology, first synthesized in 1986, including effective use of the rather new patch–corridor–matrix model; and considered how the site could connect and act as a sink the peri-urban fridges of the surrounding Denver suburbs.
