[CPEO-MEF] University of Rochester radwaste burial area

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Plutonium from UR revealed in Niagara

Corydon Ireland
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (NY)
October 19, 2004

LEWISTON - About 90 miles west of Rochester, in rural Niagara County, is 
a historical remnant of the University of Rochester’s role in the making 
of the atom bomb.

It doesn’t look like much: a cattail marsh 21 feet by 21 feet in size, 
within an undulant field of weeds and wildflowers. But the so-called 
University of Rochester Burial Area is in the heart of what used to be a 
12-square-mile military site. In 1943, part of that site was turned over 
to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret federal operation that created 
the atomic bomb.

In those days, UR did research on the health effects of radiation, using 
the remote Niagara County burial area to entomb the remains of thousands 
of laboratory animals contaminated by radiation, including more than 
270,000 mice. Artifacts of darker UR experiments - some injecting 
unwitting patients at Strong Memorial Hospital with plutonium - were 
apparently also buried there.

The site was investigated and cleaned up by the U.S. Department of 
Energy 30 years ago. But a 2002 investigation by the U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers - made public this year, with a report due this fall - turned 
up plutonium and other radioactive metals.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041019/NEWS01/41019001/1002/NEWS

--
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org


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