Summary

From the 1940s, when the United States began to develop nuclear weapons, through the late 1980s, the government gave little attention to the environmental consequences of its activities. As a result, many Energy Department (DOE) sites are now contaminated with radioactive and hazardous wastes, and DOE faces the largest, most, complex cleanup in the country--estimated to cost up to $1 trillion. Although DOE received more than $23 billion between 1989 and 1993 to clean up contamination at the nuclear weapons complex, the agency has yet to actually complete the cleanup of a major facility. DOE's progress has been impeded by unrealistic agreements with the Environmental Protection Agency and the states to bring the facilities into compliance with federal environmental laws.