The Slick Rock Uranium Disposal Cell in Burro Canyon is one of about 20 similar radioactive waste disposal cells in the USA created to entomb the remains of former uranium processing operations. The cell is 900 feet long, covers 12 acres, and contains over a million dry tons of waste material, composed of tailings, soil, and buildings from two uranium mills, known as the Slick Rock Uranium Processing Sites, five miles away. The mills closed in the 1960s and the site was cleaned up as part of the Department of Energy’s Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project, in 1995.
