St. Louis Landfill Fire Could Reach Radioactive Waste in Months

Al Jazeera America

A fire smoldering underneath a landfill north of St. Louis since 2010 could reach radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project in as little as three months, according to a report released by Missouri’s attorney general.

Much of the uranium used to make the first nuclear weapons was processed in downtown St. Louis, and the waste was moved around the region for decades. In 1973 a private company that bought some of the waste from the U.S. government illegally dumped it at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Missouri, a northern suburb of St. Louis.

As reported in part three of Al Jazeera’s May series looking at the effects of the Manhattan Project on St. Louis and its suburbs, the extent of the contamination, in terms of severity and location, at the landfill remains largely unknown, but researchers have concluded that it is likely far worse than previously thought.

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