NASA's Plan To Clean Up Space Program Launch Site Contamination

Elliot Chang tips a story about plans from NASA and the US Air Force to clean up the areas around the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which have been contaminated with decades worth of carcinogenic chemicals from launching Shuttles, the Apollo moon missions, and other rockets. The KSC cleanup is expected to take 30 years, and will cost an estimated $96 million. "By far, the most common contaminant is a chlorinated solvent called trichloroethylene, or 'trike,' and its breakdown products — substances known to cause birth defects and cancer and reaching concentrations thousands of times higher than federal drinking water standards allow. ... Kennedy's sandy, alkaline soils are thought to neutralize most metals and other contaminants before they become a problem up the food chain. But trike dies hard. And workers kept pouring it into the ground in the early years of the shuttle program, thinking it would evaporate."

Comments

aka: The Valdez package (aka The BP package)

[sl4shd0rk]

The way the $96M will break down:

1) Hire 150 people from the unemployment line
2) Purchase 150 white jumpsuits, boots and hardhats off Ebay
3) Purchase 150 rolls of Downy (The Quicker Picker Upper)
4) Announce clean-up effort to media who roll the vans
5) CNN is ablaze for a week with pics of clean-up efforts and dirty paper towel
6) Next week, all is forgotten
7) Split the $94M three ways with other vampires running the corporation

Re:aka: The Valdez package (aka The BP package)

[citizenr]

This is exactly how Exxon Valdez oil spill was "cleaned". They used Hot Water Pressure Washers to "clean up" rocks. It:
-killed everything that survived the oil (moss, bacteria, microorganisms)
-evaporated/made oil airborn making workers breath it
-pushed oil back into the ocean or deeper into the ground

Re:Thinking it would evaporate?

[Trepidity]

Trichloroethylene was used for decades to decaffeinate coffee, among other uses, so it wasn't considered particularly dangerous until fairly recently.

Re:Thinking it would evaporate?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There is also the fact that the stuff was a solvent, so it was presumably used for cleaning/degreasing/etc. and thus would only be considered waste once it had acquired a load of assorted dissolved materials, many of them probably nasty, which wouldn't evaporate at all and would simply be left in the soil...

SRBs: all kinds of nasty stuff

[k6mfw]

On one of MIT Open Course lectures, http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-885j-aircraft-systems-engineering-fall-2005/lecture-notes/lecture-2/ where Aaron Cohen (orbiter project manager in 1972) discussed history of the Space Shuttle, professor Jeff Hoffman said on one launch with family members 3 miles from launch pad had to get in the busses to leave the area 5 minutes after launch. Hoffman's brother was a "space nut" and wanted to watch the vehicle go over the horizon (and he was not happy about leaving early). Reason they moved everyone because afternoon launch had smoke from the SRBs drifting toward the viewing site. There's all kinds of nasty stuff and they didn't want people to get exposed to the smoke.

Thanks to Tekfactory for bringing these MIT courses to my attention.