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Introduction

In the relatively unlikely event you find yourself in Falls City, Texas, I urge you to consider taking a ride down Farm to Market 791 W southwest of town. The smooth asphalt road follows gently rolling hills typical of the area and gives a pleasant drive.

Scenery includes well-farmed fields interspersed with stands of mesquite, post oak, live oak, and pecan trees, along with the usual roadside cactus and brush. The occasional farmhouses are generally neat and well maintained. Diversified farming is the rule, with grain, corn, sorghum, hay, and vegetables as the main crops.

About eight miles out of Falls City, the road intercepts Farm to Market 1344. You will want to turn right. In less than a mile, a massive mound of grayish-white loose stone looms in front of you on the left side of the road. The unexpected stone pile might first strike you as a supply of cobble for some misplaced ancient Roman roadbed. On closer inspection you realize that it is a purposively and carefully constructed edifice. Yet you can’t help but wonder what it is doing here and what purpose it serves. It is too new looking to be the work of some ancient undiscovered civilization.

If you could measure its dimensions you would find it to be a rectangle approximately 2,200 feet by 2,600 feet and rising approximately 62 feet above the surrounding terrain (DOE 2008). You might be inclined to climb to the top for a closer look. After all, it is the height of a six-story building and should offer a great view of the countryside.

Looming in a grassy field, set back several feet from the road, the mound is protected behind a five-strand barbed wire fence. A large vehicle gate is available but it is securely locked. Before attempting to climb over the fence to scale the mound, it might be worthwhile to read one of the signs that are regularly positioned on fence posts along its whole perimeter.

There are 64 perimeter signs mounted on steel posts approximately at 500-foot intervals. Each sign is 24 inches wide and 18 inches high. The international symbol for radioactive materials is prominently placed on each sign warning of a potential hazard. Black lettering on a yellow background states that the site is a uranium mill-tailing repository, it is U.S. government property, and no trespassing is allowed (DOE 2008).

Having easily suppressed any desire to scale the mound, you perhaps will instead continue to walk along the fence. If you do, you will encounter a monument of unpolished granite just inside the entrance gate at the east corner of the site. There is actually a second identical monument at the crest of the mound, or as we can now call it, the disposal cell. But this one cannot be seen without climbing to the top. These monuments are embedded in concrete, giving a hopeful feeling of longevity. The inscription consists of a diagram showing the site boundary and location of the cell, its date of closure (February 9, 1994), the quantity of waste tailings (7,143,000 dry tons) and the level of radioactivity within the disposal cell (1,277 curies of radium 226) (DOE 2008). What it does not state is that this mound was built by the U.S. Department of Energy with the intent of remaining sealed and intact, guarding the world against the contained radioactivity for a proposed period of 1,000 years. Considering that the half-life of radium is 1,690 years and that the cell contains uranium continuously decaying into additional radium, even 1,000 years is not enough time to render the mound’s contents safe for exposure. In light of the condition of other constructions dating from 1,000 years past, the government, or someone as yet unknown, has a formidable maintenance job for a long time to come.

This location is officially known as the Falls City Uranium Mill Tailing Disposal Site. It is historically recognized as the Susquehanna Western uranium-processing mill. It was formally one of the busiest uranium producing mills in Texas. Now it stands as a testimony of man’s attempts to put the world back the way he found it—before the uninhibited and unregulated hunt for nuclear energy and power. Its story, as well as that of uranium mining in Karnes County, can be traced back to the very beginnings of the discovery of uranium ore in Texas.

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