COLORADO SPRINGS — Officials are unsure if there are radioactive shells at Fort Carson left over from small nuclear weapons training in the 1960s.
An application was filed by the Army for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission to leave uranium buried on the post, but no evidence of the shells has been found.
The nuclear-tipped bazookas called the Davy Crockett were never fired in combat.
Since discovering the uranium munitions in Hawaii in 2005, the Army has spent 10 years of detective work to figure out which bases participated in the testing program. The Army says 12,405 acres may have been contaminated during the Davy Crockett days.
Fort Carson is joined on the roster by installations in Hawaii, Washington state, Georgia, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and California.
The Army says cleaning up the waste at Fort Carson and other installations is too expensive — the price tag is estimated at more than $25 million in Colorado and more than $300 million nationwide — so it is asking the federal nuclear watchdog agency for permission to leave the waste where it may have been for 50 years.
A 1961 report on the Davy Crockett program shows that about 7 ounces of depleted uranium were used in each training round.
The Army estimates that more than 1,400 of the training rounds could have been fired at Fort Carson, but none have been found during post inspections, which included use of radiation detectors, but record-keeping was haphazard when the rounds were used.
Even if the ammunition is on the base, it’s likely not dangerous.
Fort Carson radiation safety boss Ben Hutchinson said there is no risk to the public or soldiers.
“You can handle it with your bare hands and it’s not going to hurt you,” he said.
But some university studies of depleted uranium indicate it can cause health problems, including cancer, birth defects and kidney failure. And other studies have linked depleted uranium ammunition used during the 1991 Persian Gulf War to Gulf War Syndrome and a number of maladies.
