REPAIRING the environmental damage caused by the US鈥檚 nuclear weapons programme could cost as much as $375 billion and take until the year 2070, according to the Department of Energy. Even then, some sites would not be restored to pristine 鈥済reen fields鈥�, says the government. Areas that are too contaminated to be cleaned up would be fenced off to protect the public.
Around 40 per cent of the money would be spent on cleaning up two particularly contaminated areas. These are the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, where plutonium was produced, and the Savannah River site in South Carolina, which produced plutonium and tritium.