With the worst of winter yet to come, thoughts of summer picnics in the forest preserves are about the farthest thing from most people’s minds.
But next summer, southwest suburban residents will have an additional site in the Cook County Forest Preserves on which to spread a picnic blanket.
A 34-acre section in the Red Gate Woods in Palos Township, where the world’s first nuclear reactor lies buried, will again be available to picnickers, hikers, cyclists and other outdoor lovers.
The site, off Archer Avenue between Willow Springs and Lemont, was fenced off nearly six years ago by the county Forest Preserve District after a chunk of uranium the size of a hockey puck was discovered buried near the surface.
This fall, following a $6 million mop-up by the U.S. Department of Energy, the 10-foot-high chain-link fence around the 1-mile-square site was removed, allowing the public in again.
Because it was well into the fall before the fence was removed, no festivities were held to mark the reopening, said Steve Mayberry, a spokesman for the forest district.
“However, we may have some kind of event in the spring to publicize the fact that the former nuclear-reactor site is again available to picnickers,” Mayberry said.
Those who venture onto the site will be trodding on a parcel that changed the course of world history. The first nuclear reactor, buried beneath its surface, which was constructed at the University of Chicago in 1942 and then rebuilt the following year in Red Gate Woods, was used to research nuclear fission. That led to the development of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, ending World War II.
The reactor was moved to Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont in 1954. Two years later, the site in Red Gate, which had been on loan to the federal government for the atom bomb project, was returned to the forest district. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission decommissioned the reactor, encased it in concrete, and buried it beneath the parcel.
A gray stone memorial marks the spot where the reactor was.
Despite the historical significance, the idea of picnicking over a buried nuclear reactor may unnerve those concerned about the possibility of being exposed to radiation. However, federal energy officials, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the county forest district have given the site a clean bill of health.
To doubly ensure the site’s safety, the Energy Department cleaned up the site even though it was determined that the chunk of uranium found there, along with small amounts of other contaminants, posed little if any danger to humans.
The site was turned over to the Energy Department by the forest district for the cleanup operation and returned to the district this year.
The site was to have been reopened to the public late last summer, but the state Environmental Protection Agency called for a delay until it could be assured by the Energy Department that amounts of lead and sewage sludge from an old smelter, which had been part of the nuclear-reactor complex, had been satisfactorily removed.
The assurances were obtained in late September, and the following month, the forest district began removing the fence.
