Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-236) and index.

"From 1978 to 1998, Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project contractors removed and secured nearly forty million cubic yards of low-level radioactive uranium reduction mill tailings waste from abandoned mill sites in eleven states and four Indian reservations - enough material to bury 2300 football fields in ten feet of radioactive sand. The contractors also decontaminated over five thousand residential, commercial, and public properties that had been polluted with tailings. In addition to these federal efforts, the private uranium industry interred millions of tons of tailings generated by their mill operations. The UMTRA Project was the world's largest materials management program designed to shield the public from potentially hazardous radioactive waste." "This is the story of that project, contextualized within the history of American atomic power and uranium mining."--BOOK JACKET.