NASA's Plan To Clean Up Space Program Launch Site Contamination 96
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."
Re:Thinking it would evaporate? (Score:2, Interesting)
I always called it Tri-Ethane, which is also a trademark, I think...
And yes, I would be happy to take it in and dispose of it for ya. Nothing better for degreasing, all you have to do is pay attention and let it evaporate before you do any welding or hot work. L0ser environmentalists stuck me with the tri-ethelyne, not nearly as effective.
SRBs: all kinds of nasty stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
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/ [mit.edu] 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.